Crusade!

CRUSADE

Stuart Slade

Dedication

This book is respectfully dedicated to the memory of Brigadier General Paul Warfield Tibbets

Acknowledgements

Crusade could not have been written without the very generous help of a large number of people who contributed their time, input and efforts into confirming the technical details of the story. Some of these generous souls I know personally and we discussed the conduct and probable results of the actions described in this novel in depth. Others I know only via the internet as the collective membership of The History, Politics and Current Affairs Board yet their communal wisdom and vast store of knowledge, freely contributed, has been truly-irreplaceable.

In particular, I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Shane Rogers who provided irreplaceable insight into the engineering problems that result from the destruction of Germany. In addition, Shane provided analyses of South East Asian and Australian politics and history that were of extreme value. A note of (hanks is also due to Ryan Crierie who willingly donated his time and great expertise in producing the artwork used for the cover of this book.

I must also express a particular debt of gratitude to my wife Josefa for without her kind forbearance, patient support and unstintingly generous assistance, this novel would have remained nothing more than a vague idea floating in the back of my mind.

Caveat

Crusade is a work of fiction, set in an alternate universe. All the characters appearing in this book are fictional and any resemblance to any person, living or dead is purely coincidental. Although some names of historical characters appear, they do not necessarily represent the same people we know in our reality.

Copyright © 2008 Stuart Slade

Contents

Chapter One: Operational Requirements

Chapter Two: Move To Contact

Chapter Three: Engagement

Chapter Four: Skirmish

Chapter Five: Melee

Chapter Six: Casualties

Chapter Seven: Recovery

Chapter Eight: Pitched Battle

Chapter Nine: Aftermath

Chapter Ten: Reprisals

Chapter Eleven: Clearing Up

Epilogue

Previous Books In This Series

The Big One (1947)

Anvil of Necessity (1948)

The Great Game (1959)

Crusade (1965)

Coming Soon

Ride of the Valkyries (1972)

CHAPTER ONE: OPERATIONAL REQUIREMENTS

Stonewall Jackson Elementary School, Hanleytown, South Carolina

The man was giggling as he held the schoolgirl up as a shield. Behind him, the rest of the children were sitting on the floor whimpering gently with fear. Not far away from them, Miss Clarke, the schoolteacher, was lying in a corner. She was dying and she knew it, bleeding out from the deep knife cuts in her arms and legs. She'd accepted her own death but she was mortally afraid for the children that had been in her care.

Ever since the man had burst into the schoolroom, shouting incoherently about the sin of teaching boys and girls in the same class, she'd known that there was little hope for any of them. When the little girl had started crying loudly, the man had grabbed her and was now using her as a shield while he shouted abuse and what appeared to be demands out of the window. He had been getting more excited every moment and now he was making wild gestures, waving the knife in his free hand over her head. That's when it happened.

For a moment, Miss Clarke didn't know whether she was really seeing it or whether loss of blood was causing her to hallucinate. The glass in front of the man's head shattered inwards and she saw, or thought she saw, his forehead flatten slightly as the bullet struck it. Then the sides of his head rippled with the Shockwave before his skull exploded in a shower of blood and bone. A few seconds later? Or a few minutes? However long it was, the door burst open and the police emergency response team entered the schoolroom. First in was Hanleytown's only black policewoman, who dropped her shield and made straight for the little girl on the floor. She swept her up in her arms.

“ It's over honey, it's all over, the bad man won't hurt you any more, the bad man won't hurt anybody again.” She looked down at the body with a shattered head lying on the floor. “ Lord have mercy on us, is that ever the truth.”

Meanwhile, the medical team was getting Miss Clarke onto a gurney and rigging an emergency blood transfusion. The wounds themselves weren't fatal but she'd lost so much blood her skin had gone gray-white. But, with a medical team, and a good supply of blood, well, it looked bad but with luck, she'd make it.

Outside, the Hanieytown Chief of Police was waiting. He'd been rehearsing what to say ever since the sound of the shot, this was something he wanted to get right. The maniac in the schoolroom had picked his target well. The school had been in the middle of open ground with more than two hundred yards to any cover. He had made it clear if he saw any police approaching the building, he would kill all the children, but he'd miscalculated very badly. There was good cover for a sniper, six hundred yards or more away and visiting Hanieytown was a sniper who could make the shot.

A couple was approaching him, a middle-aged American man with the bearing a Marine never quite lost no matter how long he'd been retired and a younger Russian woman with the imperturbable solidity that Russian women seemed to acquire almost at birth. She was carrying a Moisin-Nagant rifle with a powerful PMU telescopic sight. Captain Novak came sharply to attention and threw the best salute he could manage. “ Gospodin Klavdia Kalugina, the community of Hanieytown is deeply in your debt. On behalf of all our citizens, I wish to express our heartfelt gratitude for how you have saved our children with your skill.”

“ Thank you Chief, but your thanks are not necessary. Any man who would threaten children in such a way is evil and it is the duty of us all to confront evil at every opportunity.” Her voice was completely flat, without any intonation. Tony Evans glanced at his wife; her gray eyes still had the cold lifelessness that marked her as being in a place it was better not to ask about. Then, even as he watched, the animation flicked back in and her eyes once more had the dancing humor that made them so beautiful. “ Anyway, it was not such a hard shot.”

“ Gospodin Klavdia,” Novak was careful to use the very respectful 'Gospodin' rather than the more casual 'Grazhdanin,’ “ it was a better shot than any of my men could have made, and some of them have been hunting deer since before they could walk. If you have the time, could I further impose on you to give a couple of my best shots some help in improving their skills?”

“ Of course Chief Novak. What rifle do your men use?” “M1 Garands, Gospodin Klavdia.”

“ Then I suggest you start by getting rid of them. It is impossible to make good shots with semi-automatic rifles. The movement of the action throws off the aim. I recommend you replace them with '03 Springfield rifles and the best telescopic sights you can find. Now, if you will excuse me, I would like to secure my rifle and wash.”

The two men watched her head for their car, one of the new Mustang convertibles. “ Tony, I'm sorry if this mess has ruined your evening but Klavdia's presence was an advantage we couldn't neglect. She's probably saved a lot of lives tonight. I'd offer her a reward or something, but it might offend her. Any suggestions?”

“ Don't worry about the evening, we were going to see Judy Garland and Jane Russell in Anna Karenina but tomorrow will do. If you want to make Klavdia really happy, see if you can find her an Ikon, a real one. They're rare in Russia, the communists burned most of them and the Germans destroyed most of those left. The Russians take their religion really seriously now.

But, Captain, what the hell happened here? I grew up here and I don't remember anything like this ever happening before.”

“ Nor me Tony, and I've been living here a lot longer than you. On the surface, well, my head is telling me it’s just some nutcase out to make a statement, but my gut disagrees and says it's a lot worse than that. I got a feel there is something here we don't understand yet, can't tell you how I know that, but I do.”

Captain Novak lay broke off for a minute and took a message from a state trooper. “ You know The Manor?” Evans nodded; it was reputed to be the best restaurant in South Carolina, “ The owner has asked you and Klavdia to be his guests there for dinner. Any time you like and as often as you like. His kid was in that room.”

Town Square, Yaffo, Palestine.

The square was filled with howls and the weird ululating noises the local women made at such events. The hysteria in the crowd was building constantly, even though the glare of the noonday sun was painful as it reflected off the white-washed buildings and glass windows. Dispersed throughout the crowd were the agitators, who made sure that the fever of the crowd was constantly being stoked. The crowd itself had long since ceased to be made up of individuals and now had a life of its own, a life that blotted out the minds and feelings of its constituent parts. The agitators, though, had another function. Anybody who didn't show the required frenzy would be singled out for investigation. Next week, the crowd could be gathering for them.

Then, the doors of the court building were opened and the condemned were thrown out. They were a family, or so the posted verdicts had said, but they had been so badly beaten that it was impossible to determine whether they were young or old, male or female. Had anybody in the crowd been detached enough, they could probably have guessed at the victim's ages by relative size but if anybody was capable of doing so they hid it well. The condemned wore only torn rags so somebody who retained the ability to see clearly might have been able to pick out the women but any who could do so hid that as well. It didn't matter anyway,

the condemned were all dead no matter what their age or sex. They just hadn't stopped breathing yet.

The guards dragged the victims through the crowd, taking their time about it so those nearest the path could throw stones at or spit on the condemned family. If they had been so minded, if the dynamics of crowd behavior had been less overwhelming, the more perceptive members of the crowd might have spotted some very strange things about those guards. They spoke to each other in a strange, guttural language, one that completely lacked the lilting melody that made Arabic a pleasure to hear. Some of them had blue eyes and fair hair, most had skin that was reddened from the sun rather than bronzed. All of them were large, powerful men who handled their victims with the brutal efficiency of long practice.

Once through the screaming crowd, the victims were hauled to stakes in the middle of the square and shackled to them. Brushwood and kindling was already waiting and it only took moments to stack it around them. That was another strange aspect about the scene for those with the wits to see it; execution by fire was a European practice, not a Middle Eastern one. Who would burn valuable wood just for executions? Had any members of the crowd retained the ability to analyze the events taking place in front of them they might have wondered just what was going here. This was a ritual execution, shouldn't stoning be the method used? But, questions were irrelevant and asking them was dangerous.

The strange men, the 'Guardians of the Faith,’ lit the tires. The chanting and howling in the square reached a new pitch of excitement, drowning out the screams inside the fires. The black smoke drifted across the square and into the sky. 80,000 feet higher, an aircraft with absurdly long wings turned again, its gyro-stabilized cameras recording the scene below. Nobody in Yaffo Town Square knew they were being filmed, and none of them would have cared if they had known.

Main Conference Room, National Security Council Building, Washington D. C.

The film projector shut off with a series of clicks that echoed around the silent room. “ That must be the most horrible

thing I have ever seen.” President Lyndon Baines Johnson's voice was shaking “ I never believed I would see human beings being publicly barbecued in the twentieth century. Who were those poor people? And, how did we get this film?”

“ Mister President, answering your last question first, for twenty years it has been Strategic Aerospace Command policy -and the policy of the United States of America- that SAC aircraft go where they wish and do what they want. We call this policy “ Open Skies,” by which we mean, of course, that other people's skies are open to us. Now, other nations are used to that policy, most accept it, some resent it but more welcome the sight of our bombers overhead.

“ We make a point of taking film and giving copies to the governments in question. This means they can make accurate maps of their countries, something we take for granted but many countries have never seen before. We can spot water resources and other national assets. In fact, some countries find our aerial photography so valuable they actually ask us to over-fly them and pay us for the products. In this case, though, the imagery you have seen was taken by a U-2 reconnaissance aircraft. Its flight was not welcomed, but those underneath could do nothing about it.

“ The victims of this dreadful event were a Moslem Imam and his entire family. He'd been running an escape route for Jews hiding out in Palestine, up the coast through Lebanon and into Turkey. Whether somebody informed on him or the authorities found out some other way, we'll probably never know. I must admit I thought that the Jewish population of Palestine had already been exterminated when the Jewish settlements in the area were overrun but it appears that a significant number went into hiding. We have now learned that the Moslem population has organized a substantial underground movement dedicated to helping them escape. Obviously the ruling authorities regard the existence of that movement as a serious threat to their rule so they have gone to great lengths to stamp it out.

“ Those performing the executions are part of an organization called 'The Guardians of the Faith'. There are some highly anomalous features of these murders. For example, they bear far more resemblance to the legends of the Spanish Inquisition or the European witch trials than any part of Islamic culture. This is because the 'Guardians of the Faith' are Europeans. We know them better as Einsatzkommando. When Model and the survivors of his army escaped from southern Russia a few years back, the SS Einsatzkommado escaped with him. They found refuge in what is now the Caliphate, Model's troops have become a sort of Praetorian Guard for the Caliphate leaders. The Einsatzkommando became the 'Guardians of the Faith” and, as we can see, are carrying on the same old way.”

The Seer thought for a moment. “ In fact, there is quite a culture clash here. It's pretty obvious that Model's people don't really understand the people they are living with and their hosts don't understand them. This execution by fire we've been watching is a good example of that phenomenon. It's so bizarre as to be almost inexplicable in local terms and it highlights just how alien these 'Guardians of the Faith' really are and that's going to cause a lot of tension in the medium term. Be that as it may, it would appear that this atrocity was intended as a public example of what anybody who helps the 'ungodly' escape the 'Guardians of the Faith' can expect. Not just them, but their entire families. The Jewish family in question here were simply executed, beheaded as we understand, along with a number of Druze from the Lebanon and a few others.

“ At the time of Operation Jungle Hammer, the Russians captured a mass of evidence that pointed to the birth of the Caliphate and shared it with everybody who would be affected. As a result, the Caliphate plans were knocked a little askew; the birth and growth of the new state was in public, it did not spring on the world as a fully-developed entity. That was fortunate for us and for the rest of the world. The three countries that formed the original core of the Caliphate in 1961 were Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq.

“ It's not a coincidence that all three were occupied by us during the Second World War and we treated them with a certain degree of disdain. We needed to build supply lines through them and we needed their oil, so we built the lines and took the oil. Across the borders, the Germans were treating the Moslem populations of areas they occupied with much more than disdain. They ruled it the way they ruled everything else, with maximum brutality. That radicalized the populations in question and, combined with resentment at our conduct, we have this. In one sense, it’s our baby, we created it and now we have to live with the consequences.

“ Anyway, that's the past, and its long gone. Our problem today is that inner core was joined in 1962 by Saudi Arabia and, in 1963 by Syria, Jordan and Palestine. Last year, the Lebanon and Kuwait fell to what were allegedly coups but were in fact thinly disguised invasions by Caliphate forces. Those gains are much less impressive than they sound, the countries taken over were chronically weak, chronically unstable and the convoluted events that took place there during the war pretty much destroyed any legitimacy the existing rulers had. The British used to keep that area in order, now they've left, it was a power vacuum that got filled.

“ In every case, a country joining the Caliphate has been 'cleansed,’ that is, non-Moslem inhabitants have been exterminated. In Caliphate eyes, any who do not support that concept are either apostates or non-Moslem. It is important to note that, for non-Moslems, leaving is not an option. The choices they face are convert or die. It appears that an attempt to incorporate Turkey into the Caliphate was made but it has, so far, failed. However, the Turks are facing endemic terrorism as a result. There are also signs that Caliphate terrorism and subversion are spreading north, into the southern Russian provinces. You may recollect that there was recently serious fighting in Chechnya as a result. The Russians had a hard time putting down what amounted to a rebellion there.”

“ It was a barbaric display. How can we call such people our allies?” Secretary of Defense McNorman looked defiantly at the other occupants of the room. He'd taken on the post of Defense Secretary with much talk of how he was going to reorganize the department and bring in modern managerial practices. Then, he'd found out his post was largely ceremonial and consisted primarily of opening airbases and launching ships. He was a powerless figurehead and everybody in the room knew it. Most of them were staring back at him with barely disguised contempt.

“ Robert, I don't think we could ask for better allies than the Russians at this time. And they are the ones who had to deal with that problem, not us.” President Johnson's voice was kindly but the real message was an unmistakable 'shut up.’

“ That is indeed the case, Mister President. The Chechnya situation was a hard one for anybody to crack. The Caliphate rebels were mixed in with the civilian population and used them as cover. The Russian troops had no way of knowing who was hostile and who were civilians caught in the crossfire. The Russian troops, of course, did what they had to in order to protect themselves. Fortunately, the casualties on their side were light, but Russia cannot afford even small losses in manpower.

“ The good news is that staunch resistance in both Turkey and Russia seems to have stalled Caliphate advances there. Instead, the Caliphate has turned its attention westwards towards Egypt and the Sudan. It appears those two countries have been earmarked as the next stage in the expansion of Caliphate control. From there, our guess is that they intend to advance their control along the entire North African littoral of the Mediterranean.

“ There is one final aspect to this situation that is perturbing. There is a growing incidence of terrorist attacks around the world. Mostly they have been in Europe and the Triple Alliance but we have had a few here as well. There was that sniper incident in Maryland and a school hostage situation in South Carolina last night. I understand, the latter was resolved by the Russian wife of an American citizen who now lives in Russia. There have been a couple of other attacks on civilians here, a bus attacked, few other things. None serious, if necessary towns can call out their militia but we're a long way from that at the moment.”

“ Your precious bombers can't help us now, can they?” McNorman sneered “ My financial models show that if we'd gone for missiles instead and scrapped the bombers, then abandoned the bloated fighter and missile defense systems, we could save enough money to afford a proper army.”

“ This would be the same mathematical model that produced the Edsel?” For the first time in the meeting President Johnson's voice was amused.

“ There was nothing wrong with the Edsel, Mister President, Ford just did not promote it properly. Look what they're producing in its place, the Mustang. Who would want to buy a car like that?”

The Seer looked as if he was going to say something then shook his head. There was no need to dignify the man by arguing with him. The missiles versus bombers argument had been fought and won years ago. “ Mister President, at the moment the primary military threat to the United States still comes from Chipan. Over the last four years, they have made great strides towards creating a leaner and more efficient military force structure, one that is a substantially greater threat to us. They have equipped their long-range bombers with air-launched missiles that are much faster and longer ranged than before. They even have submarine-based ballistic missiles stationed off our west coast.

“ Fortunately, that's nothing we can't handle and our defenses are able to protect the west coast against attack. However, for all its military power - which we should not and must not underestimate - the Chipanese are rational players on the world scene. We can negotiate and make deals and generally come to accommodations with them.

“ The problem with the Caliphate is that they are not rational and we cannot deal with them. As a simple example. It is their state policy that women should not receive any sort of education. It is their desired aim that women should become an illiterate class. Effectively they are eliminating half their total workforce in the name of the strictest possible interpretation of some very ambiguous claims. It may well be significant that the man who attacked the South Carolina school seemed primarily concerned with the fact that girls and boys received the same education in the same room.

“ Their educational system is theocratic and largely dependent on repeating long passages of religious teachings. Any scientific data that contradicts their religious dogma is discarded.

In doing so, they have eliminated whole stretches of physics, biology, geology, oh, more ologies than I can name. But they're gone. In a couple of generations time, they won't have the scientific base to run a modern country. Which suits them just fine I might add. Their idea of a functioning state comes straight out of the seventh century.”

Viceregal Palace, New Delhi, India.

Sir Martyn Sharpe woke up bolt upright. It was the nightmare again, the one he'd been having now and then, ever since he'd seen that painting in the Thai National Museum. It always started the same way, there were a group of people playing cards in a room. The Ambassador, The Seer, a man in a Navy petty officer's uniform, a grizzled army sergeant, others as well. He couldn't understand the rules of the game so he'd looked closer and realized that he was one of the cards being dealt, so was his country and so was everybody he knew. Then he understood he wasn't just a card, he was part of the stakes as well. And that's when he woke up.

His chest was hurting, a vicious cramping pain that seemed to spread down his left arm. He tried to relax and breathed deeply, feeling the pain ebb as he did so. He'd have to see a doctor about the pain; it was getting more frequent these days. The first few times he'd written it off as cramp or indigestion but it seemed more than that.

It wasn't as if he hadn't enough problems. The long-running insurgency in northern India and Kashmir had turned very ugly after the Caliphate had become a reality. What had been a traditional insurgency now had evolved into outright terrorism. Hindu temples had been blown up or burned down, a few nights ago a crowded cinema had been set on fire - after somebody had chained all the exits shut. More than 300 dead. It hadn't taken long before the Hindu population had started striking back. Mosques had been attacked and there had been communal rioting. The North was on the verge of civil war and he couldn't see any way of stopping it.

The Philippines was being hit as well. Mindanao had always been a lawless area but the never-ending banditry down in that part of the world had taken on an ugly religious overtone. There too, it was the symbols of the religious majority that were singled out for attack. A couple of cathedrals had been destroyed and car bombs detonated in religious processions. The Philippine government had tried to negotiate with the bandits but the response had been chilling. “ Convert to Islam, adopt Shariah, prohibit all other religions and then we'll negotiate your surrender.” So, the Philippine Government had activated the military clauses of the ASEAN agreement and ASEAN had done the same with the Triple Alliance treaty. Now, Thai and Australian troops were helping put the Mindanao insurrection down.

Idly, Sir Martyn wondered if the Ambassador was down there. He hadn't seen her for a couple of years now, but he somehow doubted she'd changed very much. And the mess in Mindanao was the sort of situation she was likely to give her personal attention. Sir Martyn smiled; he'd have to read the local newspapers and see if anybody had died under mysterious circumstances. He poured a glass of water from the carafe and drank it down, the pain in his chest had gone now, just leaving a dull ache. Now, if only the other problems could go away that easily.

Cockpit, RB-58C “ Marisol” , Bunker Hill Air Force Base.

“ I'm bored. We never do anything wild any more. I thought we were going to have a fun time together.”

Marisol's voice was petulant. Major Kozlowski could sympathize, After a lively first year that had put markers for four destroyed enemy aircraft and three radar sets under her cockpit, he and Marisol had spent their time on routine training, enlivened only by the annual Red Sun exercises and the occasional “ Open Skies” demonstration flights. Mind you, Red Sun had become interesting of late, especially since the SAC F-108 Rapiers had joined the battles. That had annoyed Marisol as well, she wasn't the fastest, highest-flying aircraft on the block any more. In a year or so, the NORAD F-l 12B Blackbirds would be around as well; that raised the spectacle of triple-sonic dogfights. It looked like the Air Force was going to have to buy even more of Nevada to keep the range big enough.

Kozlowski felt the thump as Marisol's main wheels touched the ground. The nose reared high and he brought it down gently onto the runway. Then, he popped the drogue chute and lifted the nose again for aerodynamic braking. Slowly Marisol came to a halt on the runway. Kozlowski taxied her slowly into the parking area. With almost 1,200 RB-58s and PB5Ys in service, the aircraft had ceased to become a temperamental hot-dog and was now a routine part of SAC operations, but taxiing the aircraft still took care or the tires would blow.

A few minutes later, he was standing on the runway beside Marisol's nosewheel when General Declan arrived.

“ Good flight Mike. Now tell me, do you like spaghetti?”

Helicopter Deck, USS Austin LPD-4, Eastern Mediterranean

“ A little bird with a yellow bill Came upon my window sill I coaxed him with a piece of bread Then I crushed his tiny head”

“ SOUND OFF”

“ ONE! TWO!”

“ SOUND OFF”

“ THREE! FOUR!”

“ SOUND OFF”

“ ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR! THE CORPS!”

Gunnery Sergeant Esteban Tomas looked at the platoon drawn up in perfectly-aligned attention on the helicopter deck with an expression of undiluted misery and disbelief.

“ How could the Corps have come to this?” His voice was almost - but not quite - shaking with grief. “ A routine morning work-out and you're sprawled on the deck, sobbing your guts out with exhaustion. With a bunch of squids watching as well. What has the Corps come to? When I enlisted we had to run from the barracks to the mess hall and back. For every meal, it was five miles and uphill both ways.” There was a snort of laughter from behind him. Tomas whirled around and unerringly descended on the guilty party.

“ You think that a ten mile run for each meal is funny Marine?”

“ No sir.”

The Marines on either side edged back, the wind cringed, the sky darkened and the ever-present seagulls circling the amphib fled in sheer undiluted terror. “ No... WHAT?”

“ No Gunny.”

“ So if the idea of the run isn't funny perhaps you think I am? Do you think I am funny, Marine?”

“ No Gunny.”

“ Perhaps you need some time to decide what is funny. You know what the distance around this flight deck is?”

“ No Gunny.”

“ It's 524 feet. That means ten circuits of the flight deck are equal to a mile. So Marine, you can run 50 times around the flight deck, about face then run another fifty times. Now.”

The Marine set off on his long, lonely run around the flight deck. Despite its name, the helicopter deck's prime purpose wasn't to operate helicopters but to give the embarked Marines a large flat area they could use as a parade and exercise ground. Like all her fellow LPDs, Austin was primarily designed to keep her Marines tit and in good condition during the long active deployment. It showed in strange ways, the flight deck was just one. Her hatches were sized so a Marine in full combat gear could move through them quickly and easily, the traffic areas were designed so the Marines could get to their landing craft unhindered. Fully loaded, Austin carried a battalion of Marines and could keep them fit for action.

Plowing along beside them was another amphibious warfare ship, USS Alamo, LSD-33. Superficially, she looked the same as the LPD but inside there was a critical difference. LPDs were personnel transports, designed to look after Marines, keep them safe and well and deliver them to the beach-head. LSDs were designed to do the same for their vehicles. The Alamo carried the unit's tanks and self-propelled artillery. As a result, her docking bay was bigger, housing tank landing craft, LCTs, rather than the tracked carriers of the infantry.

In front of them was another type of amphibious warfare ship, the helicopter landing ship or LPH. This was intended to do the same job as the LPD but she delivered her marines by helicopter rather than amphibious armored personnel carriers.

Finally, bringing up the rear was the fourth member of the team, the LKA supply ship. She carried the stockpiles of food, ammunition, fuel and everything else the group needed.

The four ships made a balanced combat group, capable of putting a battalion landing team anywhere it was ordered. For bigger jobs, four such groups would come together and a command group would join them to land an entire regimental combat team. If the situation really demanded it, all sixteen amphibious warfare groups and five command groups in the Atlantic fleet could concentrate on a target and put an entire division of Marines ashore.

Surrounding the amphibs, shielding them from potential attack were a group of destroyers, missile-armed with a mix of explosive and nuclear warheads in their magazines. Their nuclear-tipped Terrier missiles could devastate a target but Gunnery Sergeant Esteban Tomas knew that only his Marines could go ashore and take possession of the area. That was their job, and it was his job to see they were fit and well-trained. So...

“ Right girls. We'll run through the program again. And this time, try not to humiliate the Corps in front of the squids.”

Captain's Bridge, USS Austin LPD-4, Eastern Mediterranean “ How is Chief Williams?”

“ Not good sir. The surgeons on Westover saved his leg but he's going to be out for a more time that I care to think about.”

Chief Williams had been working on a maintenance failure on the docking well when one of the LVPTs had shifted in the heavy swell, trapping his leg between its tracks and the steel deck. Another reminder that any seaman's real enemy was the sea itself. Chief Williams was lucky, the hospital ship Westover was close at hand and he'd been helicoptered over within a few minutes and on the operating table in less than twenty. But, with the bones crushed, it would be a long time, if ever, before he went to sea again.

Another tick in a ledger that was already measureless. A ledger that grew every day, sometimes slowly, sometimes with terrifying speed. Even in peace, training accidents, human error, equipment failure just plain inexplicable bad luck took lives every day. Sometimes, Captain Pickering wondered if civilians understood that or if they just assumed being in the military was another job, just one that had better-looking uniforms and more expensive toys. What was it that British author Kipling had said “ If blood be the price of admiralty, Lord God, we ha' paid in full?”

And there was no way around it. The supposedly learned commentators back home were fond of saying how SAC had destroyed Germany at a cost of less than 200 men, yet they were careful not to mention the hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who had died in Russia setting the stage for The Big One. Nor did they mention the tens of thousands of Navy pilots who'd died over France.

On Pickering's first ship, the Shiloh, over a thousand had died even while the atomic bombs were falling on Germany. America was free because of them all, and the butcher's bill would continue. There was a new Shiloh now, in fact she wasn't so far away. Nuclear-powered, bigger with an airgroup whose capability the old Shiloh could only have imagined. Would she die the way the old Shiloh had died, gutted by fires?

“ We're in luck sir. I talked with BuPers and managed to get us a new Senior Chief. A good man, one of the very best according to my man in the Bureau. Seems to have served on every ship in the fleet and been everywhere a US warship has dropped anchor. They say he was Senior Chief on Old Ironsides herself and whipped John Paul Jones into shape.”

Captain Pickering was beginning to get a terrible sense of impending doom.

“ In fact, Sir, he's an old shipmate of yours. You served together on the old Shiloh.” “ ¹

Pickering felt the sense of impending doom thicken into a solid fog of certainty. With almost supernaturally perfectly timing, a well-remembered voice echoed around the superstructure.

“ YOU, you there with the paintbrush. You some sort of DEMOCRAT or something? The people in their benighted stupidity may have put a damnable DEMOCRAT into the White House but the Navy is still the Navy. It’s up to us to keep things running until sanity returns. CHIP before you paint. Chip that rust off, wire brush the area to bare metal then red lead prime and paint. You put paint on top of rust and it'll be off faster than a DEMOCRAT chasing a bribe.”

The door opened and the figure Pickering had last seen when they were plucked off the burning wreck of Shiloh entered. “ Permission to enter the Bridge Sir. Reporting for Duty, Senior Chief P.... Captain Pickering Sir. It’s good to see you again Sir.”

Physically, Captain Pickering was standing in the middle of his Bridge, returning the textbook salute with one of his own. Mentally, he was hiding behind the Pelorus. “ Senior Chief, welcome on board. I see you have mellowed with the passing years.”

Woomera Test Range, Australia

Hangar Alpha was sealed and guarded. Two long limousines were already parked outside and a third was pulling alongside. Sir Martyn Sharpe went to meet the new arrival with barely suppressed delight. The escort opened the back door and a familiar figure slipped smoothly out.

“ Madam, it is, once more, a very great pleasure to see you.”

“ Sir Martyn, thank you. It has been too long since I last enjoyed the pleasure of your company. I am sad to say that the problems in the Philippines are proving most intractable. The tactics we have employed successfully elsewhere are not effective in the face of the enemy and the operational environment we have in Mindanao. But, let us not speak of such things. Today is a day of achievement, a day for pride and rejoicing.”

The dignitaries entered Hangar Alpha. Inside, there was a shrouded shape, obviously an aircraft but its details hidden. The VIPs took their seats and the lights dimmed. Smoke started to rise in front of the shrouded shape, colored by spotlights playing upon it. Wagner's “ Ride of the Valkyrie” started playing. Then, the Program Manager's voice came over the loudspeaker system.

“ My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, Honored Guests. Ten years ago, Great Britain started a new program, one intended to return the country to the forefront of aviation technology. Alas, this program was doomed to failure. Less than three years after its inception, that program was canceled by the British Defense Minister Mr. Duncan Sandys, who recognized that the cost of its development was far beyond Britain's means.

“ Indeed maintaining a military aircraft industry at all was too much for the country and, except for a few minor programs it was wound up in favor of the civilian aviation sector. The British engineers and designers went abroad, to Canada and to here. With them, they brought knowledge of the planned British aircraft. We purchased the details that we needed and, in 1960, we restarted the program as a Triple Alliance joint venture. My friends, this was a program managers' dream. Australian brains, Indian workers and Thai money.”

Sir Martyn smiled, he knew the second half of the joke. A program managers' hell; Indian brains, Thai workers and Australian money. It was true too. Indian industry lacked advanced technology skills but its people were renowned for their ability to get jobs done by sheer hard work. On the other hand, the Australians had acquired a reservoir of high-technology, not least from Europeans who wanted to emigrate somewhere with better prospects. The problem was that their financial resources were very limited, Australia had spent most of the 1950s in a deep economic depression and was only just coming out of it. The Thais had all the money now, their banking and investment position saw to that, but their workers were notorious for seeing hard labor as something to be studiously avoided. Put together in the right way, the results could be astounding. As they'd been this time. The program manager had stopped speaking, the music swelled to its crescendo and then.

“ I present to you.....The Alliance Aviation TSR-2”

The shroud was rolled back, exposing the gleaming white aircraft. A long fuselage, short, high mounted wings that bent down at the tips, two seats, a small nose. A dedicated, long-range low altitude supersonic strike bomber. There was a collective gasp and then a swelling round of applause. Under it, the Ambassador turned to one of her friends, “ Sir Eric, what was TSR-1?”

“ The Fairey Swordfish, Ma'am, an old biplane torpedo bomber used by the Royal Navy.” The Ambassador smiled her thanks. She'd had to bang heads together to get this program running. The Thai Air Force needed the aircraft and their experiences trying to keep their American-built F-104s and F-105s flying had convinced them of the need to build aircraft locally.

The Indians needed the aircraft even more to replace their ancient F-80s and F-84s. Then, the people who'd done the initial negotiations had wandered into a morass of calculations over purchase orders, workshare and a thousand other bits of administrivia. She had cut that Gordian Knot easily. None of the three members of The Triple Alliance could build this aircraft alone, they all needed it equally badly. So she'd forced through an agreement that saw the formation of Alliance Aviation as an equally-shared venture by the three governments. The workshare issue would be sorted out by open bidding on the subsystems and components; the best bid won the contract no matter who it came

from. That wiped out the workshare issue and the program had gone ahead from there.

There was more to come; The Triple Alliance had found out that Canada was about to follow Britain's example and drop out of the military aviation business. In doing so they were canceling a new and very promising long-range interceptor called the Arrow. Alliance Aviation was negotiating with the Canadian Government to buy the prototypes and production line, design art and everything else needed to build the aircraft here. It wasn't sealed down yet but the negotiations looked promising. If that went through, The Triple Alliance would be building world-class aircraft, the only better ones would be those in SAC's terrifying arsenal.

Falnja, Iraq Satrapy, The Caliphate

Janissaries, that's what they'd become. Janissaries. Walther Model, once a Field Marshal of the Wehrmacht, once the Fuhrer's Fireman, once the Baron of New Schwabia, was now the leader of a corps of Janissaries. Oh, it was a privileged position enough on paper. His community was the private and personal guard - and the striking force - of the Caliphate itself. Or, to be more precise, the Satraps who made up the ruling council of the Caliphate.

Model's people had also provided the expertise and support manpower for the Council's spy and covert services to keep the Satraps in line. Model had vehemently refused to provide the operational manpower for the new Caliphate secret service since it bore far too many resemblances to the infamous Hashishans for comfort. The original organization had terrorized the mid-east in the Middle Ages and their new equivalent looked set to do the same. Any of the Satraps were likely to think twice about defying the Ruling Council if suicidal, drug-crazed fanatics, convinced they were going to paradise, could be sent after them on whim. Effective yes, but Model wanted no part of it. He had too few of his people left to send the survivors on suicide missions.

Model was under no illusions about the people he was working for. They were a clique of dogmatic opportunists who had taken advantage of the chaos in the Middle East to carve themselves out an empire. Well, calling it an empire was putting it all too strongly. They had taken religious dogmatism, rhetoric and a level of brutal ruthlessness and imposed their regime on a substantial area of the Middle East. Imposed their regime, yes, but only as one contending power faction amongst many. It was an interesting situation, their survival depended on them holding absolute power and not letting that power slip even for a second. For if they did, the wolves would close in on them.

That's where Model's force had come in. The Caliphate might look imposing on a map but it was nowhere near as homogenous or unified as it appeared. In fact, the only thing that held it together was that the various sects and schisms all hated the outside world a little more than they hated each other, not that there was much in it. The Caliphate was in a perpetual state of near-civil war, a crazed morass of little better than random violence, with each group trying to expand its power at the expense of the rest.

Even now, after only a few years of formal existence, the boundaries of the Satrapies of the Caliphate looked nothing like the largely arbitrary national boundaries that had existed before it had emerged from the shadows. They'd already changed to reflect ethnic and tribal loyalties, and the differences in economic structures had modified them still further. They were still changing and would continue to do so.

Model suspected that the ruling council were very well aware that it was only external pressure from the outside that was holding the whole thing together. That would explain their truculence and aggression towards the rest of the world. The more the Caliphate provoked its neighbors, the greater would be the pressure on it. The Caliphate needed to be hated and reviled if it was to survive. The constant outward pressure was another example of the same line of thought. All the Satraps wanted to expand their influence within the Caliphate, but doing so meant they were facing a zero-sum game. Every advance made by one was a loss for somebody else and that increased the chance of others combining against him.

But if a Satrap expanded to areas outside the Caliphate, it meant he was adding to his own power without reducing that of his rivals - a much safer proposition. Of course, the fact his attention was focused outside meant the position of the ruling council was all the more secure. Model knew that the rest of the world believed the Caliphate was expanding as a result of some carefully-calculated master plan but he knew that was far from the truth. There was no master plan, just the opportunistic efforts by the individual Satraps to expand their own power and influence. The ramshackle, chaotic nature of the Caliphate allowed for nothing more than that.

Of course, the problem was that the Ruling Council itself could easily fall foul of the perpetual struggles inside the Caliphate. They had seen that possibility and Model's troops had been the answer to their prayers. Tough, hardened soldiers who answered only to the ruling council and gave it a devastating military edge over any rivals. Soldiers who had nowhere else to go, nobody else to serve. The Caliphate had been very generous in its provisions for Model's community; they had established it as a hereditary, highly professional standing army. That army would supplement the existing Caliphate forces that were mostly composed of tribal warriors whose loyalty and morale could not always be trusted. They were modern Janissaries, an old tradition recreated because similar circumstances lead to similar answers.

The catch was that Model knew his history; the first janissary units formed by the Ottomans had been war captives and slaves. Later, Sultan Selim 1 filled their ranks with conscripted soldiers, non-Muslim, usually Christian. Mostly they were Albanians, Bosnians and Bulgarians. Like the Janissaries of old, Model's community was being, at least, encouraged to convert to Islam. Some already had, even so, the others still enjoyed high living standards and lived more or less as they wished. Model knew why and it had nothing to do with hospitality. The Caliphate looked after its Janissaries because of the poison gas and biological warfare factories that they were building.

The catch was that the Caliphate knew its history as well; back then, as soon the original Janissaries became aware of their own importance they had revolted demanding higher wages and more privileges. After 1451, every new sultan was obligated to pay each Janissary a reward and raise his pay rank. Soon they had such prestige and influence that they dominated the government.

They mutinied in order to dictate policy, changed sultans as they wished through palace coups. Eventually, they grew so powerful that their danger exceeded their value and the Sultans had destroyed them. That destruction was called The Auspicious Incident.

Model knew that his community here would survive only as long as his value exceeded the risk it posed. His people had been useful so far, they'd put down rebellions against the strict fundamentalism of the Caliphate. They'd put down Shi'ite rebellions against the Sunni Moslems, and Sunni rebellions against the Shi'ites. They'd crushed the infighting between various subdivisions of both. That was another advantage his troops had, being part of neither sect, their actions were independent of either. It meant, of course, that they were hated by both. That didn't matter, not to the Ruling Council. As long as threats to their power were eliminated the effects on the tools they used went unnoticed. Then again, his Einsatzgruppen had been working with gusto 'cleansing' the territory of 'infidels' and 'apostasy'.

Thinking about it, it was strange how his army and civilians had taken brutal casualties escaping from Russia but the Einsatzgruppen had hardly lost a man. It had been the Einsatzgruppen that had been the first to convert when the suggestions had started. They'd built gas chambers to dispose of those useless as slave labor and factories where the slaves could be worked to death. Jews, Christians, Druze, Bahais, Kuwaitis, Bahreinis, Saudis, the camps were full. The Einsatzgruppen had done so well they'd been given their new name of 'Guardians of the Faith' and ostentatiously demonstrated their loyalty to their new masters. Those masters did not include Walter Model.

Model sighed. He'd been so proud of getting his people out of Russia, of beating the Russians one more time. But, all he had managed to do was to lead his people into yet another trap. Every time he pulled off a miracle, every time he had done the impossible, the only result was lead his people into another trap. Each time, the traps grew tighter, the number of survivors smaller, the chances of escaping again even slimmer.

Even if they could escape, there was no way home and, anyway, there was no home to go to. He had reports from what was left of Germany, there were people there but they were scattered across the countryside in small fanning communities. The Ruhr Valley was a blasted and lethal ruin, the Rhine was a polluted mess, the lovely Black Forest, Germany's lungs, was blasted and burned. There was no home for his soldiers to return to.

He'd tried to build a new home but had seen it perish under a whirlwind of high explosives and steel as the Russian Army had crushed it. Instead, he'd become the commander of an army of slave-soldiers. An army under a suspended - but still very much present - death sentence. Now, he had to find another way out, another escape and hope this time it wouldn't lead to another trap.

CHAPTER TWO: MOVE TO CONTACT

Home of Admiral Soriva, Yokohama, Chipan

As he sprinted down the corridor in his home, Admiral Soriva could not help but reflect that paperwork especially bureaucratic paperwork and bungling, badly written, bureaucratic paperwork in particular was a lifesaver. It had saved his life anyway. His task for the evening had been reading a long dissertation from a Navy officer, written in excruciatingly jaw-breaking grammar, proposing that the decision to scrap the four Yamato class battleships should be reversed and the ships be returned to the active fleet. It was nonsense, of course, the ships had been decommissioned four years ago and had already been stripped ready for scrap.

By the end of the sixth page, frustration had overcome patience, making him screw the report up into a ball and throw it across the room. He'd almost immediately regretted the outburst of temper, the author meant well, he was doing what he thought was interests of the fleet - and was doing so in the proper, disciplined manner. Slightly ashamed Soriva had gone to retrieve the document. Walking past the window, he had noted the guard on his gate had gone. That had made him look harder, to see a body-sized shape crumpled under a tree and then a dark figure -perhaps more than one - slipping through the shadows.

The sight had made him go to his desk and take the American Colt automatic from the top drawer along with the half dozen loaded magazines he kept there. Then, he had stepped out of his office, just in time to see a figure entering the front door. A figure dressed in black from head to foot with a scarf covering the lower part of his face and a sword in his hands. A ninja, an honest-to-legend ninja. Straight out of bad novels and worse films, something this tasteless had to have Masanobu Tsuji's hand in it somewhere.

The ninja raised his sword up and Soriva shot him between the eyes. The intruder went down in a heap; Soriva had almost expected him to fly backwards like the movies, then he would have known this was a bad dream. He didn't and this wasn't. A second intruder was directly behind the first, Soriva shot him in the stomach then again in the head after he was down. The third intruder tripped over the bodies of the first two, falling flat on his face. That had never been in the movies either. Soriva shot him anyway.

It was as if the shots had been a signal, there was a ripping crash from the back of the house. More intruders, that was when he'd started his run to where his family were sleeping. Even as he reached the family rooms, he heard a scream from his eldest daughter's room. A scream that ended in a terribly final cut-off. He would have time to grieve later.

Three more intruders were coming towards him but he was between them and the rest of his family. He hosed off the remaining rounds in his pistol, dropped the magazine and slapped a new one home. All three intruders were down, one still moving. Soriva remembered the scream from his daughter's room and fired another shot, killing him. In front of him, his wife was standing in the entrance to their room, her eyes round with shock and her hand over her mouth. He grabbed her by the arm and half-pushed, half dragged her back to the room used by the other two children. As they reached it, his son opened the sliding door and pulled Soriva's youngest daughter through.

“ Father, I heard the noise so I got Hana ready to leave.”

Another thing to remember later, time to be proud of a young son who not only kept his wits when his world was falling apart but remembered to look after his little sister as well. They had to get out of here, the six dead assassins wouldn't be the end of it. There had to be another plan in case their attack failed.

Admiral Soriva's car was parked behind their house, by all the laws of logic, the attackers should have disabled or booby-trapped it. But anybody who could send assassins dressed up as Ninjas might be so obsessed with historical mythology he'd forget there might be modern options. It wasn't as if they had much of a choice anyway. Soriva pushed his wife and children out and towards the car. Their driver was lying dead by its side, his head neatly removed. Soriva reflected that the swords weren't quite such an insane idea after all, they were silent and, if he hadn't had that few seconds of warning, the assassins would have been on him and his family before he could get to his gun. On the other hand, if they'd had grenades and sub-machineguns, he and his entire family would be dead by now.

Next question; was the car booby trapped? There was no time to do a careful check, he pressed the starter button and the engine roared into life. No fires, no explosions, so far anyway. Car into gear, (still no explosions, still no fire) but the car was rocking as his children got into the back and his wife climbed into the front seat with him. Then, he rammed the bamboo gate.

It burst open, scattering fragments of wood everywhere, the car pitching and lurching as Soriva swerved out of the driveway onto the road. As he'd guessed, there were four cars parked just around the corner from his house. Estimate four attackers per car, that left ten more. A group were still standing beside the cars, Soriva guessed the rest had gone into the house to find what had happened. His window was down, as he swept past, he emptied the magazine from his Colt into the group. In the mirror he saw at least two were hit and on the ground. Almost without thinking, he thumbed the magazine release, then steered with the hand holding the gun while he fished another magazine out and reloaded.

As the car swerved down the road, he saw his wife rocking backwards and forwards and whimpering. Behind him, the children were on the floor between the seats. He hit a corner too fast, almost lost control as the car started to spin, but he pulled the

car out of it just in time, slamming a utility pole with the rear fender.

Just down the road was Admiral Iwate's home. It was burning and there was another group of cars outside. Poor Iwate. There was still time to give him a bodyguard on the way to the Yasukuni shrine where the souls of dead heroes rested. The men by the cars were scattering as Soriva's car roared up to them. One of them threw a sword at his car but it clattered and bounced off the hood, then the car swept past and Soriva emptied the magazine of his pistol again. "Sorry. Iwate, it’s the best I can do," he thought "we can't stay around to do more." He glanced in the mirror, it seemed three of the men by the cars were down.

There was an intersection ahead, blocked by some vehicles. Soriva swerved his vehicle onto the pavement, bounced off a wall and scraped through the gap on one side. He could hear a grinding noise on one side, a damaged bearing probably, and the car's controls didn't feel right any more but it was a straight run to the naval dockyard now. Only a couple of kilometers, the car would hold out until then. Rather to his surprise, Soriva noticed he'd reloaded his pistol again; he couldn't remember doing that. The Americans may be uncivilized barbarians but they made good handguns. If he'd had a Nambu, he'd still be struggling with the first magazine.

The dockyard gates were up ahead. Soriva started flashing the lights on his car - three short, three long, three short, SOS, over and over again. If the guards were really on edge, it wouldn't matter, they'd open up anyway. Come to that, he wasn't sure that the dockyard people weren't in on whatever it was that was happening. But, a Navy base was the only safe place he could think of. And, the gates were opening as he approached.

Once through, they closed behind him. There were armed Navy and Special Naval Landing Force troops all over the base. Those in the area were pointing their weapons at Soriva's car. Their commander saluted as Soriva got out of the beat-up wreck.

"Admiral Soriva sir, you're safe. Word was that you'd been killed. There are attacks going on all over the city. Its chaos nobody knows who is alive or who is doing the killing. What do we do?"

"Hold the line here. Get me to the dockyard office. The ships here are sitting ducks, we've got to get them to sea. Tell your men to hold the dockyard perimeter regardless of loss until we've got them out."

Prime Minister's Residence, Canberra, Australia

Sir Eric Haohoa rubbed sleep out of his eyes and tried to make sense of what was going on. He and Sir Martyn had been dragged out of bed early the previous morning when news of the events in Japan had started to come in. The Ambassador had been there when they arrived along with Prime Minister Joe Frye. They'd been in the emergency command center ever since. The whole Chipanese system was in turmoil, that much was clear but news of what had happened was spotty, erratic and of dubious reliability.

"Sir Eric, could you try and persuade Sir Martyn to get some rest? He does not look well and I fear for his health. 1 have to give a summary of what we know now, but after that, it will probably be many hours before the situation develops further. Please give him my word that I will call him personally if anything he needs to know breaks. Please tell him I seriously recommend that he take the chance to get some rest."

The Ambassador watched Sir Eric take her advice. Sir Martyn's face was greyish-white with fatigue and he was holding his left arm as if it was cramped or aching. Another problem to worry about.

She cleared her throat, catching the attention of everybody present. "Gentlemen, if I may have your attention? We have received some information over the last few hours that appears to put the developments in Chipan into better context. The trouble erupted about 2200 local time last night with a coordinated series of attacks on prominent military and political personnel. At first, it appeared that this a straightforward power-play between the Army and the Navy, such things are quite common and the number of killings was on a par with such events. Most of the early casualties

were senior naval officers which gave some credibility to this interpretation of events.

"However, fighting has continued between elements of the Japanese armed forces throughout the day and into the evening. Notice that I said Japanese; the situation appears to be confined to the Japanese islands and surrounding seas, it has not spread to the Chinese mainland to any great extent. Indeed, much of the fighting appears to be confined to units that remain largely Japanese in establishment; units that are mostly Chinese have, with some significant exceptions, remained uninvolved. Our sources in the Vietnamese People's Liberation Army indicate that most units on the mainland are at a heightened state of alert but remain at their posts.

"During the night, a number of warships sortied from ports and naval bases around Japan. By dawn, these came under attack from aircraft of the Chipanese Army and - it is very important to note - Chipanese Navy. Aircraft of both armed services have been engaged in combat, but again, there have been Army and Navy aircraft on both sides. Land fighting appears to be in progress between elements of the armed forces but there is no clear distinction as to who is on which side. In short, this is not an Army against Navy dominance struggle, nor is it a Chinese versus Japanese civil war. Until a few hours ago we did not understand what we were seeing.

"Things began to make sense when the first lists of those killed in the initial wave of assassinations became public. It appears that the majority, by a very high margin, were those who have been associated with the recent attempts to reform the Chipanese military and political structure.

"Over the last four years, the Chipanese have made extensive efforts to rationalize their military forces and to reduce the burden military expenditure has inflicted on their economy. This has resulted in a severe reduction in the numbers of troops in the land forces, matched by the mechanization of the remainder, substituting mobility for on-the-ground numbers. We have seen old ships retained from World War Two, and even, in one remarkable case, from World War One, withdrawn from service and scrapped.

"The money saved has been invested in new ships that are of modern design. The same process has affected aircraft production; older types have been withdrawn and the Army and Navy attempted to standardize, as far as they could, on both aircraft types and equipment for those aircraft.

"It therefore appeared that the events in Chipan could best be explained by a conflict between the new-style military leadership, the Reformers if you like, and the representatives of the older-style military philosophy. We can refer to them as the Traditionalists if you wish. We applied this model to the news of fighting and it appeared to hold. The initial wave of assassinations appears to have been an attempt by the Traditionalists to decapitate the Reformer's command structure. This appears to have been largely successful and the fighting today represents a dislocated and sporadic effort by the Reformers to hold on to their position.

"A few minutes ago we received a copy of a message that is being circulated within the Chipanese Armed Forces. It describes the events of the last 36 hours as the 'Showa Restoration', an obvious reference to the Meiji Restoration of almost a century ago. It describes the reformers as having usurped the Emperor's authority and abused his trust. The Traditionalists claim to have returned rightful authority to the Emperor and to be acting on his behalf. The document is signed by the person claiming to be the leader of the traditionalist factions, Masanobu Tsuji.

"It goes without saying that this document would not have been issued if there was any doubt over the success of the Traditionalist operation. It would therefore appear that the events of the last 36 hours can only be described as a coup, albeit a bloody and poorly organized one. Our expert opinion on this suggests that the planning of the operation contained a certain level of personal vindictiveness against naval personnel who were part of the Operation A-Go fiasco five years ago. That, in its turn, points to Masanobu Tsuji being an active participant in this operation rather than just a figurehead."

There was a long silence in the room. Eventually, Sir Eric asked the questions that were in everybody's mind. "What happens now ma'am? What does this mean for us? Where do we go from here?"

The Ambassador stood silent, her eyes defocussed. In her mind she was visualizing the likely flow of future events, a cascading stream of colored lights that mingled, split and merged as possibilities, probabilities and outcomes jostled for significance.

"In the short term, the prospects for us are very dangerous. Chipan will revert to its former policies of expansionism and aggression. We can expect provocation and attempts to extort financial, political and territorial advantages from us. We can expect Chipan to greatly increase its expenditure on armaments and on its forces. That expenditure will be substantially uncontrolled. Because of its precarious economy, we can expect it to use those forces.

"In the longer term, the situation is much more hopeful for us. Chipan cannot stand a long period of such military expenditure, within a decade, two at the most, its economy will start to implode. The critical point will come when that process becomes irreversible. At that point, they will be faced with the temptation to use all their military arsenal before they lose it. In anticipation of that time, we must start the planning necessary to bring them in for a soft landing.

"There is one question that could be of critical importance here. Many of the reformers have escaped to sea on Japanese warships. What will they do? Where will they go?"

Cockpit F-108A Rapier "Wicked Stick, " 103,000 feet over Nevada

Even the big fighter was running out of power up here. Wicked Stick was wallowing on the edge of her zoom climb performance envelope, the air around her so thin it hardly existed. The sky had long ceased to be blue and had taken on the blackness of space. The fighter was so high that Brigadier-General Charles Larry could see the curvature of the earth below him. Almost 20 miles up, well on the way to space itself but the F-108 wasn't going to make it any further. The difference between maximum speed and stalling speed was now so thin it could barely be measured and the J-93s were gulping the few molecules of air still around in an attempt to keep the great white fighter airborne.

In the back seat, Larry's Bear, his electronic systems operator, was trying desperately to get a radar lock on the satellite before the plane stalled out. They'd been under ground control the whole way, the satellite had been tracked by a ground-based radar and Wicked Stick had made her zoom climb under strict orders. Now she was where the ground control intercept had put her but the satellite hadn't appeared.

"Got it" The voice from the back was triumphant. "We have lock on the target. Wait One - Fox-November."

There was no bump, no lurch. If this had been a real launch, there would have been a whirring noise as the rotary launcher moved a GAR-9 into firing position then a thump as the 1,000 pound missile was launched. Here, in this simulation, there was nothing. Nothing that could be felt anyway, but something had changed. Stalling speed now exceeded maximum speed, the thrust from the J-93s wasn't enough anymore and Wicked Stick departed controlled flight.

The stall was vicious. Neither the F-108 nor its huge cousin, the YB-70A were known as pilot's aircraft. The nose slammed down, a wing dropped, and the aircraft simply tumbled out of the sky. One advantage of being up here was that they had more space to recover than any aircraft had ever had before them, and they would need it. Stick centered and forward, dive the aircraft out of its spin. Slowly the big tighter stabilized, the horizon stopped rotating and the F-108 was back under control.

"Control, this is Wicked Stick. Things got exciting for a moment there. Did we hit?"

There was a long pause from ground control as the range instrumentation measured speeds, trajectories, guidance arcs and lethal radii. The reply when it came was flat.

"Negative, Wicked Stick, your shot missed. Went behind the target satellite and was outside lethal radius. Nice recovery from the stall though."

"Thank you Ground Control. Better luck next time. Wicked Stick is returning to base. Fuel situation normal."

Larry set his F-108 on its course back to Nellis AFB. The combination of a fighter capable of flying at unprecedented high altitudes and a long-range nuclear-tipped missile had raised the question of whether the system was capable of taking down satellites. It was a good idea but so far it hadn't worked. The F-108A/GAR-9 combination was right on the edge of its performance envelope for anti-satellite shots and so far, nobody could make it work. This had been their third attempt. Larry knew it wasn't going to work. Good as the F-108 was, it wasn't quite good enough. That didn't matter though. Between the stand-down of the F-85 groups and the formation of the first F-108 unit, he'd been involved in the Air Force X-plane program and that had shown him where the future lay. Satellites were only the start, the Air Force was already planning a Manned Orbiting Laboratory that would put men in space for whole tours of duty.

The real jewel was another program, the X-20 Dyna-Soar, a manned, winged vehicle. The first prototype, Dyna-Soar 1 was already flying, dropped from a B-52 mother ship. The next stage would be rocket-launched near-orbital booster flights by the end of the year. Dyna-Soar II would be a manned hypersonic reconnaissance vehicle, flying at over 200,000 feet to a range of more than 6,500 miles. The prototype Dyna-Soar II was already under construction, if all went well it would fly by the end of 1967. Another version of Dyna-Soar II was going to be a nuclear-armed anti-satellite fighter. Even further down the line was Dyna-Soar III, a full-fledged manned, hypersonic, global, strategic bombardment and reconnaissance system. SAC was going into space and taking its bombers with it.

Aviano Italian Air Force Base, Italy

It was a dress uniform, no-flourishes-spared occasion. An official reception to mark the first visit by SAC aircraft to an Italian air base since The Big One had ended World War Two. A

much more significant event than just a courtesy visit by four aircraft that normally showed no reluctance to flying over Italian air space any time their flight plan demanded.

The visit was taking place at a time when the political situation in Southern Europe was in a greater state of flux that usual. Both Franco and Mussolini had survived the destruction of Germany. Certainly, they'd been German allies but they hadn't quite been good enough allies to merit destruction. Then, the situation in Europe after The Big One had been so confused that nobody had wanted to add to the mess by removing two functioning, if tainted, regimes.

When The Great Famine of 1948 - 1950 had struck Northern Europe, Spain and Italy, or, to be more precise, Franco and Mussolini, had bought their survival by shipping free food into the stricken countries. The supplies of Spanish rice and Italian pasta had probably been the margin that prevented the famine from killing hundreds of thousands of northern Europeans by starvation. Even now, with the Baltic and North Sea too polluted for fishing, most of Europe's fish supplies came from the Mediterranean.

They'd won survival, not acceptance. Throughout the 1950s, Spain and Italy had been pariah states. The standard description of southern European politics in those days had been "Mussolini speaks only to Franco and Franco speaks only to God". Almost inevitably, the two pariah nations had gravitated together, at first informally, then in an ever-growing network of trade and tariff treaties. Eventually, they'd been formalized in an alliance known as the Mediterranean Confederation.

It wasn't as close as it sounded. Appearance had always counted for more than reality in both Spain and Italy, but it was still a group to be reckoned with. In fact, with Spanish control at the Atlantic gateway by way of its fortresses at Gibraltar and Ceuta and Italian control in the middle by way of Sicily, Malta and Libya, the Mediterranean Confederation had a potential stranglehold on trade across the whole area. There was an American fleet in the Mediterranean, and one of the reasons they were there was to make sure that potential did not become reality.

But, all of that was appearances, not reality. In reality, the Mediterranean Confederation was a weak structure on shaky foundations. Despite its name, it was an alliance, not a discrete political entity and its members had differing aims and objectives. They were also very different countries.

Spain was still a dictatorship, ruled with the absolute authority of General Franco. Certainly, his relationship with Hitler had allowed him to seize Gibraltar when the British had started their slow collapse under Lord Halifax but that was all. It had taken decades for Spain to recover from the depredations of the Civil War and its isolation hadn't helped. Spanish rule in its North African provinces was weak and ineffectual, they only retained authority because there had been no credible challenger to that appearance.

Now, that was changing. Once the situation on the African Littoral started to deteriorate, they had nothing to fall back on. The Spanish Air Force still flew German piston-engined fighters and bombers from World War Two. Their Navy was mostly port-bound relics of the same era and their Army hadn't changed since its victory in 1939. Spain was a grim, bleak place these days

Italy, now that was a different matter. Mussolini, dismissed pre-war as a pseudo-Hitlerian buffoon, had turned out to be a cannier politician than anybody had credited. He'd pulled out of Greece, withdrawn forces from the Egyptian border and made peace with his enemies, internal and external. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Italy had been faced with a virtual civil war between Mussolini's Legati, the Monarchists and the residue of the communists. He'd managed to avert that, allegedly inspired by a shot of a Roman legionary standard and its inscription SPQR in a film about the Roman Empire. Critics had said that the compromise he'd come up with was one only an Italian could think of and only Italians could make work.

Even Mussolini's worst critics had to admit that the scheme had worked. The Italian Constitution provided for a Parliament with two chambers. The senior of the two was the Senate whose members were supposed to represent the institutions of state, the Church, the Judiciary and the provinces. The other chamber was the Legate which was supposed to represent the people and was directly elected by popular vote. The hereditary Speaker of the Senate was the King, the hereditary head of the Legate was Mussolini and his heirs. The two were supposed to balance each other and, because their positions were hereditary, take a long-term view that the elected members of the houses would lack.

Mussolini had also shed the bombast and posturing that had made him a laughing stock during the 1930s. Perhaps the total destruction of Germany had given him a dreadful foresight of where such behavior would lead. Perhaps he was smart enough to understand that the time for such performances was over. Nobody knew for sure, but for the last decade of his life, his behavior had been as circumspect as earlier it had been boisterous. When his wife had died he'd married his long-time mistress Clara Petacci and lived quietly in Rome. He'd died eight years ago and his official position had been inherited by his son Romano Mussolini.

It was Romano Mussolini who was approaching in the line of limousines. A talented painter and jazz musician, he was a very different man from his father. On taking power, he had announced that his objective was to create a second renaissance for Italy, a rebirth of culture and style in an era that sorely needed it. He'd taken Cosimo Medici as his model and become a patron of arts and humanities, a builder of monuments and wonders. Most rulers with such plans created megalomaniac atrocities but Romano Mussolini had simply made money available and looked for the best architects and artists he could find. Then left them to do their jobs.

Under his rule, Italy had been reborn as a country of gaiety and vivacity; one where good food, good wine, music and laughter were not just considered the desirable norm but an indispensable part of life. The country made a brilliant contrast to the austere and stark dictatorship in Spain. With the renaissance had come prosperity. Italy now had the cultural authority that France had once held, Italian goods were sought worldwide for their style and a visit to the country was considered essential for any self-respecting tourist. Italy, Kozlowski thought, could have done far, far worse than Romano Mussolini.

Two men, two women and a young child got out of the middle limousine. One of the men was Romano Mussolini, the other the American Ambassador to Italy. "Colonel Hazen, Major Kozlowski, I have the honor to present the Speaker of the Legate, Signor Romano Mussolini."

The two pilots snapped out textbook parade ground salutes. Mussolini looked faintly embarrassed, as if he knew he should return the salutes but didn't know how. Which was true.

"Gentlemen, forgive me for not returning your salutes but I am embarrassingly bad at such things." Mussolini gave a disarming smile "My father was much better at military courtesies. I hope it is enough that I say how delighted 1 am to see you. I am most grateful that you have come to visit our country and brought these beautiful aircraft with you. May I present my wife, Anna Maria, my daughter Alessandra and my sister-in-law Sophia."

Kozlowski followed Colonel Hazen down the guest line. Mussolini beamed proudly when he introduced his family and had an engaging friendliness that both pilots found instantly likable. His wife had the slightly flustered charm of most young mothers at a formal affair with a young child to care for. At the end of the line Mussolini's sister-in-law was purely, undeniably, drop-dead gorgeous. Colonel Hazen was already taking Mussolini and his family over to his RB-58 Spider Woman. Heaven be praised, that left Kozlowski to look after the sister-in-law.

"May I show you over Marisol Signora?"

"Please call me Sophia, Major, I have too much formality in my life. But I would very much like to see the legendary Marisol who lead the raid on Myitkyina."

"I'm Mike, Sophia. Please be careful on the steps, it’s easy to slip. This is my crew station here, the pilot's cockpit. Aft of me is the Bear's Den where Eddie Korrina works and right aft is the Electronics Pit. That's Xav Dravar's seat. I'm just the bus driver, I fly the aircraft. Eddie is our offensive systems operator, he operates our air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles while Xav looks after the defensive systems, the jammers, decoys, threat location systems and the rest."

"May I sit in your seat Mike? I've never sat in the pilot's seat of a real aircraft. My brother-in-law Bruno was a test pilot you know but one of his tests killed him. I never really knew him."

"Certainly Sophia, I'll have to ask you to take your shoes off though, we've put some padding down here in case you wanted to get in. Here, I'll help you in. Just swing in, put one foot on the seat and sort of slide in. That's right."

"Thank you. This is so small, how do you and your crew stay in here? Did you fly over in one stage or land in the middle? And what have you seen of Italy so far?"

“Marisol is cramped. When we go for training we are all measured and weighed, then only the smallest SAC pilots fly the RB-58s. We came over in one stage but we refueled from tankers based in the Azores. We could make it in one flight, just, but we would be running on fumes by the time we got in so why take the chance?

"We haven't had a chance to really look around yet, that's something we're all promising ourselves. The thing about Italy we love already is your food. In America, all we really know of Italian cooking is pizza and spaghetti. We'd never guessed there was such a fantastic variety of food and wine here. I'm not sure we'll fit in the cockpits when it comes time to go home."

Sophia laughed and ran her hand over her body "Do not underestimate spaghetti Mike. Everything I have, I owe to spaghetti. But tell me something. 1 have heard that in SAC you pilots talk to your aircraft and sometimes you believe your aircraft talk back. Is this true?"

Mike glanced at his crewmates. They nodded slightly. "Sophia, its more than belief. All three of us talk to Marisol and she speaks back to us." His guest gave him the "boys and their toys" look that women have used since Caveman Ug proudly showed Cavewoman Nug the latest addition to his collection of stone axes. "Honestly Sophia, she really does talk with us."

Sophia gave him a famous dazzling smile. "Mike, I have been asked to take part in a film about the Siege of Myitkyina. I'm supposed to be the wife of one of the bomber pilots. If we have dinner together tonight, could you give me some help with the correct language and way of speaking? Tell me the sort of things that the wife of a SAC pilot would be concerned about. And also tell me more about the relations you have with your aircraft? I would like to know more about you and your Marisol, she is very beautiful indeed."

"Why, thank you Miss Loren." Marisol's voice came out of the intercom speakers either side of the seat.

Sophia Loren's eyes went wide and danced with incredulous delight. Kozlowski and his crew raised eyebrows - for Marisol to speak to somebody outside their tight little circle was unique, unheard of. Bombers only spoke to their crews and then only when a special rapport existed between aircraft and humans. Even then it was never quite certain whether the aircraft really spoke to them or their crews just imagined that they did. Then something else registered and the impact stunned him. Unless his ears were deceiving him, Kozlowski realized he had just been invited to spend an evening with the fabulous Sophia Loren.

North American Aviation Facility Palmdale, California

Her first two sisters were aerodynamic prototypes, barely more than empty shells. They didn't even have the proper crews, being restricted to a pilot and co-pilot. They'd done their job now, they'd be retired to test and research work. Their great white shapes waited outside for the roll-out of the youngest member of the family, the first YB-70A. She was very different, a fully-equipped bomber with a crew of four; a bomber-navigator and a defensive systems operator sitting behind the pilots. Her appearance was strangely different from the original two prototypes. Her shape looked the same although there were subtle differences. It was her color that really marked her out, instead of prototype white, she'd been painted a peculiar translucent creamy-silver.

She'd be faster than her older sisters as well. They'd topped out at Mach 3.2 at 72,000 feet. The prototype test flights had taught the designers a lot though; the YB-70A was expected to reach Mach 3.3, perhaps Mach 3.4. Sometimes, quietly, the engineers spoke of getting to Mach 3.5. They also spoke of flying her at 80,000 feet and over ranges of almost 8,000 miles. If her test program went well, the first of the 250 production B-70As would be joining SAC in less than a couple of years. They'd be replacing the B-52s. The replacement was not before its time. The Gray Lady was a formidable foe, one that even the triple sonic interceptors never took for granted, but her speed and altitude put her within the intercept envelope of ground defenses. That wouldn't be the case with the B-70; there was nothing known that could stop her reaching her targets.

Taking shape in the Palmdale lofts was a design for something that was, in its way, even more remarkable. An airliner that looked like a B-70 but could carry 76 passengers. Pan American had already put in an order for them as the Star Clippers, that meant TWA would be following soon. Flying on the Star Clippers would be expensive compared with the large Convair, Boeing and Douglas airliners but they could get from coast to coast in around 90 minutes. That mean it would be possible to make daily commutes from California to New York and back. The social implications of that were intriguing to put it mildly.

Also in the background was another airliner, one a long way in the future but the reason why representatives from Boeing were here today. North American and Boeing were collaborating on a Mach 3 airliner that would carry more than 200 passengers. That would be truly revolutionary, it would make supersonic air travel something that ordinary people could reach, just as the Convair 990 and the Boeing 707s had made flying a routine activity that the passengers never really thought about.

Today, though was the day of the YB-70A. Her roll-out, the day she would be revealed to the world. The dignitaries and guests were already gathering, waiting for the ceremony to start. North American Aviation had laid on a magnificent buffet lunch for the guests; a copious supply of champagne was chilled and available. The walls of the hangar were covered with briefing panels showing the aircraft, what she could do and how she would perform. In one corner there was even a simulator of the flight deck so people could get in and pretend to be flying America's latest bomber.

Then, there was a hush as a government limousine pulled up. Secretary of Defense Robert McNorman got out and walked up to the aircraft parked in the hangar. The President and CEO of North American Aviation went out to greet him, hand outstretched, but McNorman walked straight past him without saying a word. He pushed the waitress with the tray of champagne to one side, then walked once around the YB-70A. Then, still without saying a word to anybody, he got back into his car and was driven off. Behind him, there was a buzz sweeping through the rollout guests. On the VIP stand, The Seer leaned over to his personal assistant and whispered "Lillith honey, I think he's just declared war."

CHAPTER THREE: ENGAGEMENT

Chang-Shu, China-Tibet Border

Smoke was still drifting across the base, buildings were still wrecked and bodies still had to be removed. The order from the Showa Restoration Council in Tokyo to remove the General from command and replace him had been obeyed, but only at the cost of some bitter lighting. The General and a battalion's worth of loyal troops had dug in and fought hard. They'd been defeated in the end, of course, but it had taken longer and cost more than the plans had anticipated.

Now it was time to move on to the next part of the plan. The whole logic behind Showa Restoration was that the reformists over the last five years had abandoned the path of conquest and turned their backs on their destiny. If the Council was to have a legitimate claim to power it had to produce a conquest fast, a visible, undeniable demonstration that Japan and China were on the move again.

Colonel Hu Kai-Lee had command of the division now. Or what was left of it. He had to recruit - a more accurate word might be kidnap - replacements for his casualties and get them trained to some rudimentary level of capability. He didn't have forever; two or three weeks at most. Then, the assault on Tibet would start.

It had been carefully planned. A revolutionary government was already waiting to issue its claim to power, the divisions along the border were already waiting to go. As soon as they were over the frontier, they'd become the "loyalist" faction of the Tibetan Army, driving the forces of the "revolutionary" priests out. By the time the mess was straightened out, the new government would be in Lhasa and it would all be over.

There was a plan within the plan of course, there always was. A close look at this division would tell people that. Technically, it was a division of the Japanese Imperial Army but the number of Japanese in it got smaller every day. Whenever the Japanese wanted a job done, they used one of the divisions they felt they could rely on, that is, one where the majority of the troops were Japanese. But, of course, that meant the casualties fell on the Japanese, not the Chinese. Now, there were very few units left where the Japanese were a majority. In some "Japanese Divisions," there were only Chinese personnel left.

Colonel Hu laughed, the Japanese really thought they could rule China with their paltry millions when there were over a billion Chinese? Had they never read history? They could have their 'Emperor' and prattle on about their Bushido, but with every year that passed, the joint country was becoming more Chinese and less Japanese. One day soon, the Japanese would be gone, absorbed into the infinite number of Chinese.

"Sir, we have dug a pit for the enemy rebel dead. The men are putting their bodies in now. What shall we do with the wounded rebels?"

Hu thought for a moment. The deposed general was Japanese and his defenders had been mostly Japanese troops. Hu's family had come from a place called Nanking and he still had nightmares over what had happened to them there. His revered father had been beheaded by a Japanese Lieutenant, Mukai Toshiaki, simply to win a bet with another Lieutenant as to who could cut the heads from 100 Chinese the fastest. It turned out Mukai Toshiaki had miscounted, he'd actually killed 106 Chinese in the race. For all that, Father had been the luckiest of his family.

"Go through the wounded rebels, separate the Japanese from the Chinese. If the Chinese repent and wish to rejoin us, let them. We need as many trained soldiers as we can get. Bury the Japanese wounded along with their dead."

Oh yes, thought Hu, China is absorbing Japan, step by step, but that will just be the start. One day soon there will be no Japan left at all. And one day, one day he would find IVIukai Toshiaki and then Colonel Hu would avenge his family. The Japanese might believe otherwise but nobody in China had forgotten Nanking. The invasion of Tibet was a step along that road as well.

Bridge INS Mysore, At Sea, South of Taiwan

"My God, she's a mess."

She was - or had been - one of the new Chipanese Kawachi class missile cruisers. The design ancestry was vaguely apparent; the Tone class cruisers had been the starting point. The Kawachi class were much larger; 20,000 tons at least, probably more. Japan may now be Chipan in the eyes of the world, even if the Japanese themselves refused the name, but old habits of understating official displacement figures died hard.

The long sweeping foredeck was still there, but the guns had gone. In their place were ranks of inclined launch tubes for missiles: four ranks of four. A total of 16 long-range, nuclear tipped anti-ship missiles. The aviation facilities were aft; now they handled helicopters fitted out with surface search radars for target acquisition. Amidships were the anti-aircraft missile batteries. Point defense only of course; the Japanese still hadn't got around the problems of trying to handle crossing targets in an area defense mode. Nor, for that matter, had anybody else. Even the Americans were reported to be in trouble there.

According to the recognition diagrams and the photographs in Mysore's CBs, the midships section should have four funnels in two pairs, angled outwards and two heavy tower masts that carried an array of radar and electronic warfare antennas. All of that had gone: instead, the midships was a charred tangle of burned-out wreckage. The cruiser was down by the bows, to the point where her foredeck was awash, and she was listing. The visible damage wouldn't allow for that, she must have been hit underwater.

"Sparker, make 'Indian Warship C12 to Chipanese cruiser. Do you require assistance?'". There was a long pause then a signals lamp started to flash from the crippled ship.

"Mysore this is Admiral Soriva on Imperial Japanese Navy warship Kawachi. We have many badly injured. Medical assistance urgently needed." The emphasis on the 'Imperial Japanese Navy' had been very strong, repeated twice in the signal.

"Soriva" Admiral Kanali Dahm looked thoughtful. "He was one of those listed as being killed in the Showa Restoration Coup. So he made it out. Only just by the look of it. It must be bad over there if they're asking for assistance. Sparker, make back to Kawachi 'Am sending medical teams immediately. Stand by to receive helicopters.' Number One, alert the Ship's Poisoner and tell him he'd got clients to experiment on. Take whoever he needs to assist. Then make to Godavari and Gondwana, advise them of the situation and tell them to get medical teams over also. If the butcher's bill over there is as bad as that ship looks, they'll need all the help they can get. Once Comms is clear, get on the long-range radio troposcatter link to New Delhi and advise D-Ops of what's happening. Jim Ladone needs to know what's going on out here ASAP. Oh, and order Gondwana to lock her missiles onto that wreck. Just in case."

Mysore and her two destroyers swung parallel to Kawachi while the helicopters started to shuttle medical personnel over. Dahm was pacing the bridge, waiting for his people to radio a report. He needed to know what was happening. Eventually, it came.

"Captain, Sir. It’s a bloody mess over here. Ship's been torn up, casualties are worse than anything I've ever seen. Women and children too, a lot of the crew had their families on board. I'm going to set up a first aid station here then shuttle the worst wounded back to Mysore. They need our medical facilities, we can't do the job here. And Sir, Admiral Soriva wishes to speak to you in person. Requests permission to come over."

"Affirmative Doc. Women and children first. Put the Admiral on the first available helicopter seat." Dahm sat down, remembering the carnage on the quarter-deck of Hood five years ago. It was still something he saw on the nights when sleep wasn't a refuge. It was widely accepted that Masanobu Tsuji had been behind that atrocity. That it had been a failed attempt to pull Australia and India apart.

A few minutes later two Marines escorted Admiral Soriva onto the bridge. He was tired, desperately so, his face worn and haggard with the strain of the last few days. He still wore the tight-collared uniform of a Chipanese officer though. It was an article of faith in the Triple Alliance that if Chipan gave its officers more comfortable uniforms, they wouldn't be so truculent.

"Thank you for seeing me, Admiral Dahm. As you can see, our condition is desperate. We've lost our pumping capacity and we're trying to prevent further flooding using manual bucket chains." Soriva rubbed his eyes. "We've taken two torpedoes, one forward and one amidships. It happened when we broke out of Yokohama with our sister ship Settsu. A sub got us both on the way out. Settsu was going down, we got the women and children off her then aircraft arrived. We couldn't stay Admiral." There was a haunted look in his eyes and the pain in Soriva's voice was obvious. "We had to get clear. The last thing we saw was Settsu sinking and the aircraft strafing the survivors. Then they came after us. We took three more hits from missiles, all amidships. If it hadn't been for a rainstorm that blocked out their radar, they'd have finished us too."

Soriva's expression wandered for a few seconds. "Admiral Dahm. We are on our way to Kaohsiung in Formosa. We will be joining forces there that have refused to acknowledge the Showa Restoration Council. But we have our families on board and the women and children from Settsu. Admiral, I beg you, please take our women and children, give them sanctuary."

Dahm nodded. A true sailorman could do no less when another was in distress. "We'll do that, Admiral. Have your people get them ready for transfer and we'll bring them over by helicopter. I low many do we speak of?"

Admiral Soriva was looking at his shattered ship, the tormented look in his eyes again. Dahm repeated the question to his Number One and got an answer via the medical teams. About a hundred and seventy, many wounded. After a while, they started to arrive as the helicopters landed on the deck. Many had crudely bandaged wounds, all were shocked and exhausted. Admiral Soriva was watching them arrive on the closed-circuit television that showed the bridge crew what was happening on the flight deck aft. Suddenly his gray and prematurely elderly face rallied as a woman and two children got off the helicopter.

"Your family, Admiral?" Soriva nodded. "Look, my cuddy is just aft of the bridge. If you want to have some time alone with them, you can stay there." Dahm ran a quick mental check, everything that was classified or confidential was locked away. "Frankly Admiral, you need some time to rest. We'll get some portable pumps over to your ship."

Behind him, his Sparker cleared his throat. "Return message from D-Ops Sir. Signed by Admiral Ladone himself."

Dahm took it "Render all possible assistance. If Kawachi sinks, place survivors under your protection and transport to Manila. If Kawachi remains under way, offer medical and damage control support." Dahm sighed with relief; Admiral Ladone had guessed what would be happening here and given orders to cover Dahm's rear. Dahm would have to send a much longer report soon. If Taiwan was breaking away from Chipan, the Triple Alliance authorities needed to know straight away. That bit about the new Chipanese air-to-ship missiles not working in the rain was worth passing on as well.

Longland Jungle Training School, Atherton, Queensland, Australia

"Very good men. Before we start our training cycle I have some good news for you. The battalion is giving up Old Smelly at long last and we will now receive the Self Loading Rifle Number One Mark One Star. You will hand in your old rifles and receive your new weapon. Battalion Sergeant Major Shane, if you would lead please."

BSM Shane walked up to the armorers table and put a Bren gun down.

"What happened to your Rifle Number Five, Sergeant Major?"

"Lost in Combat sir"

"Well, where did you get this from?"

"Battlefield salvage, sir."

"Very good, Sergeant Major." Shane moved to the next table where an SLR No.l Mk.l* was signed out to him. Meanwhile the next soldier had approached the table and put down a Chipanese Arisaka Type 12. Before the ordnance officer could speak the owner anticipated the question "Lost in Combat sir. Battlefield salvage sir. All ammunition is MF headcode sir we chucked the MFC stuff. That goes for all the boys"

"Very good, Sergeant. Next."

Another Arisaka Type 12 "Lost in Combat sir. Battlefield

salvage sir."

A 7.62mm Capsten sub-machine gun. That, at least, was an authorized-issue weapon. "Lost in Combat sir, battlefield salvage sir."

An AK-47. "Lost in Combat sir, battlefield salvage sir."

Another Arisaka Type 12 "Lost in Combat sir, battlefield salvage sir."

Another Capsten submachine gun. "Rifle No.5 lost in Combat sir, battlefield salvage sir."

Another AK-47. "Lost in Combat sir, battlefield salvage sir."

The piles of assorted weapons grew steadily. The ordnance personnel started segregating the "battlefield salvage" into piles. The old SMLEs were very conspicuous by their absence. The men who'd received their new weapons were standing around inspecting the rifles. They'd been anxiously awaited, the rumors were that the new rifle was something quite special. The authorized Bren gunners were getting a version of their old weapon, chambered for the new 7 mm round. There were a lot of good things said about that as well.

Suddenly the OIC heard an intake of breath from one of the reception tables. On it was a new weapon, something that looked like an AK-47 on steroids, with a telescopic sight, a long barrel and a bipod. "What the devil is that?"

There was a touch of awe in the Ordnance Sergeant's voice. "It’s a SVK Sir, the Designated Marksman version of the AK-47. Chambered for the old Russian 7.62 rimmed. It’s supposed to give infantry units a bit more reach than the AK-47. The Teas only started taking delivery of these a couple of months ago. Give one of them per squad. How did you get this soldier?"

"Battlefield salvage sir." The Ordnance Sergeant looked as if he wanted to say something then decided otherwise. Then turned to the officer in charge. "Sir, I suggest we keep this one, we haven't seen one of these yet and the tech guys here would like to play with it."

Slightly numbed by the variety of weapons being handed in, the OIC nodded. The SVK was carefully carried away and stowed somewhere discreet. Relationships between the Australian infantry, more commonly known as 'Diggers' and their Thai equivalents, equally commonly known as 'Teas' were close, but sometimes interests did diverge. And they stole equipment from each other with worrying enthusiasm Privately the OIC would have laid heavy odds that a Tea designated marksman had done much KP for losing that rifle. Unless he'd managed to steal an Australian Bren as a replacement.

By the time the exchange had been completed, there were indeed a few SMLEs handed in, from new recruits who had only just joined the battalion. They'd be sold on the export market, going to dealers who would feed America's apparently inexhaustible appetite for firearms. The AK-47s would be returned to the Teas with a few good-natured gibes about their soldiers needing to look after their kit better. The Arisakas would be going to Thailand as well, to be handed over to the Vietnamese People's Liberation Army. The rest would be going to the training school arsenal, there was always a need for a variety of odd weapons when jobs that couldn't be described had to be done.

The ammunition was being sorted as well. The .303 would go back to store, the 7.62 x 39 would go back to Thailand. The 6.5 Arisaka, that was different. The ammunition would have to be carefully checked out. The instructions issued had been quite clear, 6.5 mm Arisaka head-coded MFC was a heavy load intended for use in machine guns and should never, ever be used in the Type 12 Arisaka rifle. The real reason why the MFC coded rounds had to be dumped was quite different and much, much nastier. The propellant had been replaced and anybody who used it would find their rifle blowing up in their face. Only, the people who'd thought of that trick hadn't allowed for the possibility that Australian troops would be picking the stuff up and using it.

Lieutenant Colonel Golconda looked at his men. They were hardly recognizable as the same army that had gone to Burma five years earlier. In retrospect, looking back on that Army he was embarrassed by their ingenuousness. Then, the Australian Army had been a colonial version of the old British Army, even down to the soup-plate helmet and old-fashioned khaki uniforms. Now the uniforms were jungle green and the helmets were the American pattern, though not that many of the boys wore them. Most preferred the floppy camouflaged bush hat known irreverently as the battle bonnet. They handled their weapons with casual ease and competence. They had become an army their enemies feared.

The Australian Army had found its new self in the Burmese jungle. Building on the foundations laid down at Gallipoli decades ago, it had been hardened by the sun and toughened by the wind. The Tea Long Range Recon Patrols had taught them to make friends with the jungle, to treat it with respect and to accept the gifts it offered.

After five years, the Australians looked on the jungle as home. Most of the troops half-believed the Tea stories about spirits who lived in the woods and lakes and who could be friendly or hostile according to how they were treated. Most of the troops half-jokingly, half seriously, left presents for the jungle spirits now and then, and a surprising number believed that doing so brought good luck. It wasn't true of course, the units were doing what good units always did, they were making their own luck.

The Australian Army had found more than itself, Golconda though, it had found its place. The numerical backbone of the Triple Alliance armies came from India, sheer numbers dictated that. The Indian regiments included the stately Sikhs whose bearing was the very epitome of military dignity and the cheerfully homicidal Ghurkas as well as dozens of others. The Teas had good kit and their troops were disconcertingly capable once they got off their lazy backsides and did something. The rest of the ASEAN troops, well, they needed a lot of work. The tiny Singapore detachment was OK, the Philippine troops were good material but they had so much to learn. Just like us, five years ago, whispered a little voice in Golconda's head. As for the rest? Better not to say anything.

The Australian Army had found its niche in special operations. They were good at it and were getting better all the time. At first there had been a few irregular forces, Popski's Private Army was one, the Darwin Light Horse had been another. They'd attracted the hard cases, the ones that were not the sort to thrive under normal regimental discipline. Good men all, very good men in some cases, and the PPA and DLH had given them the room they needed to develop.

The criticism was the usual one, that the special forces were bleeding off the men who would provide the vital leadership cadres for the regular units. That might have been true but it also became apparent that most of the Australian troopers were the sort who didn't thrive under normal regimental discipline. More and more of them "Ran off to join the Circus" as the Australian officers called it. Those that came back brought their experience and attitudes with them and they'd remade the regiments in their own image - and the regiments were much better for it. The Australian Army had become an Army of special forces units.

In Burma it had worked fine. The Indians had provided the main force units, the Teas had done the counter-insurgency work in the villages and towns and the growing number of Australian special forces groups had looked after the deep penetration, long-range patrolling and the covert offensive operations. If ever the Australian Army had to fight a regular war against a conventional opponent, they'd be in trouble but, as poor old Locock had known, if it ever got that far, Australia had lost anyway.

The new Australian Army was just what the country needed to keep its enemies at arm's length. And that's what they would be doing again, very soon. The word was already spreading around the Army that they had new places to go, new jungles to patrol. This time there would be a difference.

The leas vaunted expertise in counter-insurgency had shown to be less than effective in the latest flare-up. Bringing the local population onto your side was all very well where they were sane but when they irreversibly hated you because you didn't worship their god their way, it was a non-starter. What was left was hunting down the terrorists and killing them all. Then, the local nutters might still hate you but they'd been defanged.

"Battalion Sergeant Major. A word please."

BSM Shane had been sitting with a group of the men helping them orientate themselves to their new rifles. Now, he leapt to his feet with alacrity. In private, things were much more relaxed, every officer at each level knew his senior NCO was a partner, not a subordinate, but here, in front of the men, formality was the watchword, [{specially with newbies in the unit.

"Sergeant Major, we have about three months to get the men qualified on their new weapons and get the newbies indoctrinated into the way we do things. Then we're going back out again."

"Burma Sir?"

"No Sergeant Major, that's winding down, at least for the while. Unless the new government in Chipan really heat things up. We have a new jungle to play with. We're going to Mindanao in the Philippines."

Kirkuk, The Caliphate

They were called kessel. The whole town was being cut up into those small sections, armor seizing the streets and dominating the area by fire, preventing movement from one kessel to the next. Then, once each kessel was isolated, it was brought under assault. The infantry would close up, pinning down the occupants while the engineers got into position. Then, they'd finish the defenders off with blowtorch and screwdriver. That was what they called the combination of flamethrowers and satchel charges they would use to wipe out everybody inside the buildings. Then, when everybody was dead, they'd start on the next section.

It wasn't quite that easy of course. There were underground tunnels connecting the buildings so the engineers pumped those full of thickened Soman. The nerve gas would cling to the walls, turning the tunnels into a poisonous deathtrap that would last for years. Or they'd pump gasoline into the underground shelters then toss down a thermite grenade. Sometimes the explosions were quite spectacular and every so often there were a series of secondaries from fuel and munitions stored down there. But, step by step, building by building, the town and its inhabitants were being destroyed.

That was the idea. The town had been the headquarters of some group or other opposed to the Caliphate. Model had been told their name but didn't remember it. Pathists or Bathers, something like that. They'd been a socialist group that had tried to stage a coup about the time the Caliphate itself had seized power in Iraq. They'd gone underground, tried to fight a guerrilla war against Caliphate forces and, at first, had been quite successful.

The Caliphate's local forces were hardly more than tribal militias and they'd played by the old rules of tribal warfare. Despite its amorphous, contradictory and always mutually hostile nature, the generally ill-organized Caliphate could raise quite impressive numbers of tribal levies. The problem was they were ill-armed, ill-disciplined and capable of little more than the night­time raiding of undefended camps. Faced with even marginally-competent troops, they were ineffective.

So, the Caliphate had called on Model's Janissaries to put down the revolt. They'd had enough experience in Russia fighting partisans and they knew the rules of partisan warfare as well as the Arabs had known those of tribal warfare. Lidice Rules.

First Rule. There are no rules. Here ends the Lidice Rules.

Kirkuk was the third town they'd destroyed. Behind Model's infantry were the Guardians of the Faith, once the Einsatzgruppen, who would kill off any inhabitants of the town that had survived of the infantry assault. That had lead to a minor, rather good-humored, dispute between the Guardians and the representatives of the Caliphate. The Guardians had wanted to burn the prisoners at the stake in the good old inquisition style; the mullahs sent by the Caliphate wanted them stoned in accordance with their traditions. They'd compromised, of course; the men had been burned, the women stoned. The only survivors had been babies less than a year old. They'd been sent back to Model's colony to be brought up as the next generation of Janissaries. After everybody was dead, the ruins of the town would be leveled and plowed under.

Kirkuk would probably be the last, in this campaign anyway. The back of the resistance up here was broken. That wouldn't end his usefulness, Model thought, there was plenty more work to be done. His troops were the trump card of the Caliphate. Any competent Western army could cut the Caliphate's levies to pieces and his troops were far more than just competent. So, when there was resistance to Caliphate rule, he could put it down, fast and bloody. In a very real sense, he had the only really effective military force in the Caliphate.

That was deliberate policy of course. Each of the once-independent countries that was now part of the Caliphate was a province ruled by a Satrap and the districts forming the country were ruled by lesser officials appointed by the Satrap. Officially, ruling a province entitled the ruler to be part of the Ruling Council. In fact, it Worked the other way, only members of the Ruling Council were entitled also to become a Satrap of one of the provinces. The whole structure of the Caliphate Council actively encouraged the Satraps to intrigue against each other and changes in Satrapy boundaries achieved by such intrigues made the map of the Caliphate a fluid and changing thing.

It was not uncommon for Satraps to gain control of territories not actually in their Satrapy. Of course, the Satraps required official approval once such changes had been made. The more capable and effective the Satrap, the greater his influence on the Caliphate Council - which meant the gains of the Satraps were more likely to be approved. But, if one of the members of the Caliphate Council gained too much power, the rest could combine and order Model's Janissaries to cut him down to size. Obedience to the verdict of the Caliphate wasn't optional, and there was a point when the wise backed down. Because the other option would be facing Model's troops or an assassin. It was a brutally Darwinian system and Model approved of it as it stood. What it would become still remained the problem of the future.

It wasn't as if religious or ethnic differences were the only ones that impacted the constant shifts in power and influence that made up the Caliphate's political geography. Anybody could have anticipated that. Nor was the Ruling Council the only center of power no matter how much they liked to pretend otherwise.

The Caliphate's central dogma might be provided by the theocrats in the Ruling Council, but the country was actually run by the surviving economists and technocrats. They had their heads down at this time, restricting their involvement with the interplay of politics and the intrigues between the Satraps to a minimum but they were there. One day, their time would come, one day the constant intrigues and outward pressure would result in a blunder that would fatally reduce reduced the ruling council's power and influence. Then, they would fall or be reduced to impotence, and that would also bring down Model's Janissaries. No matter which way Model looked, his options were running out.

So where would his men be sent next? Saudi Arabia was a possibility. The old king, Ibn Saud, had sired a huge number of children in his lifetime. Not surprising, he had over 900 wives and concubines. Model thought about that for a second and mentally raised a glass of schnapps to the old goat. Despite the best efforts of the Caliphate, it had proved impossible to wipe out the Royal Family, the country was covered with wandering princes with a claim to the throne who had shown they could rally traditional support in the tribes. Saudi Arabia was a turmoil of low-grade civil war between the tribes now, with the effort against the Caliphate taking a second place.

The Caliphate wasn't that worried, for every tribe fighting against the Caliphate government, there was another that saw the opportunity to pay off some old grudge or other, and regardless of their opinions on the Caliphate, thus allied with it to help get their revenge. Divide and rule worked well in the endless tribal conflicts simmering under the region but the danger was that Saudi oil production would be affected. Oil was the Caliphate's life blood. If oil production stopped, then disaster beckoned. So, Model thought, that might be his next job. Secure and protect the oil fields, then the rest of the Saudi population could continue slaughtering each other - and good riddance to them all.

There was a respectful knock on the door of his command caravan. Model gave permission to enter and one of his guard stepped in. Before he could speak, a black-turbaned mullah pushed past him with a message scroll in his hands. That was one of the affectations of the Caliphate; they wrote their messages and records on scrolls, not pages. The fastidiously clean Model wrinkled his nose, the mullah had the 'odor of piety' around him. If one of Model's soldiers had smelt that badly, his squad mates would have scrubbed him clean with sand and floor-brushes. The messenger thrust the scroll at Model and left, without saying a word.

"An accident waiting to happen, that one." Model said absently. His guard grinned and nodded before leaving. Model guessed that if he listened hard enough, he'd hear the "accident" before too long.

The scroll contained Model's orders from the Caliphate. Once the cleansing of Northern Iraq was completed, he was to take his entire force, families included, to Gaza in Palestine. That would be his new base of operations for the future. Model thought about that. Palestine had been thoroughly cleansed already so his troops weren't required for that. No, it was more likely that the Caliphate was about to expand again. Egypt was the obvious target and Model's troops would be on hand to eliminate any resistance once the expansion took place. After all, if Egypt became part of The Caliphate, Sudan would fall soon after and then the whole of the North African Littoral would be opened up.

Conference Room, The White House, Washington DC

"Mister President, the House/Senate Budget Conference has completed its deliberations, reconciling the differences between the House and Senate versions of the FY66/67 Defense Budget and has sent the reconciled version to you for signature. If we leave out the points on which House and Senate were in agreement with your original budget proposal we are left with the following.

"Dealing with the Navy first. The House authorized the construction of two new aircraft carriers, CVN-69 and CVN-70. The Senate authorized only CVN-69. The Conference has authorized the construction of CVN-69 and the procurement of long-lead items for CVN-70 with full funding for this ship and CVN-71 to follow in FY67/68. In addition, Conference notes that, with the scrapping of the last battleships in 1965, state names are no longer the source for a specific class of warship. They therefore mandate that all aircraft carriers from CVN-67 shall bear state names. Subject to Navy approval, the propose that the four carriers building or authorized should bear the following names. CVN-67 USS Texas, CVN-68 USS Oregon, CVN-69 USS Maine and CVN-70 USS Massachusetts. Conference also proposes USS Ohio for CVN-71.

"Conference agreed upon the construction of six CGN-166 improved Long Beach class missile cruisers with the first pair to be ordered this year along with long-lead items for the rest. A Senate proposal to build two enlarged versions of this class with enhanced aviation facilities aft was deferred until next year. The CGN-166s will replace the CA-139 Des Moines class cruisers, that will mean the last heavy gunships will have gone from the Navy.

“The House proposed the construction of six new large missile destroyers to replace the CG-106 Fargo class conversions, the Senate transferred that funding to research and development pending the completion of a new air warfare system for those ships. The Senate version was agreed since the air defense system is insufficiently mature for deployment at this time. Finally, the House called for the construction of six nuclear-powered attack submarines, the Senate for four. Conference compromised on the construction of eight SSNs but mandated the removal of Nautilus and Seawolf from front-line service.

“Moving on to the Army, the House presented the Secretary of Defense demand for the reorganization of the six Pentomic Divisions to a new standard, the Re-Organized Army Division. This would effectively convert them into heavy armor divisions. The House also presented the Secretary of Defense’s proposal to bring the two reserve Pentomic Divisions to active status and to form six new ROAD divisions using manpower from the Army portions of NORAD. This would provide an Army force structure of fourteen active divisions. Conference evaluated these proposals and rejected them.

“In its place, Conference accepted a Senate proposal that will see continued production of the M60A3 for the National Guard and the formation of four new National Guard brigades, one armor, one artillery, two mechanized infantry. Conference notes that the National Guard is actually over-subscribed with applicants at this time. Conference does not fund any substantive changes to the Regular or Reserve Army.

“In the Air Force, Congress presented the Secretary of Defense’s demand that funding for the B-70, F-108 and F-1 12 be terminated and the resources directed into Army and ballistic missile procurement. Conference soundly rejected this proposal and has authorized production of 96 F-108s, 90 F-1 12 and 100 B-70A aircraft, the last subject to successful testing of the YB-70 pre-production aircraft.

“In addition, the Budget Conference supported continuing development of the XB-74 Dominator for a planned entry to service in FY70. A House proposal for a 50 percent reduction in the interceptor and missile units forming NORAD was rejected by Conference as was a proposal to restart ballistic missile development. In Tactical Aviation, the proposal to terminate further F-105 procurement and transfer funding to the F-1 10 was agreed. Finally, funding for the first batch of RB-58F aircraft was included as proposed by both House and Senate. However, the senate also added funds for the remanufacture of RB-58C and RB-58D aircraft to RB-58F standard and this was approved by Conference.

“Mr President, Conference presents the FY66/67 budget for your signature.”

President Johnson signed the document. “If there are no further...”

“A point of order Mister President.” Secretary of Defense McNorman was standing. “Under the terms of the 1958 Department of Defense Enabling Act, the Secretary of Defense may refuse to release appropriated funds and reallocate them if a national emergency so demands. It is my judgment that the weakness of our army and our lack of missile development constitutes a grave national emergency and I am therefore refusing to release the funds appropriated for the F-108, F-112, B-70 and B-74 programs and re-allocating the money to the planned reorganization and enlargement of the United States Army.”

McNorman sat down with a conceited grin on his face. President Johnson shot a furious look in his direction, this was the sort of thing Presidents pulled on their Secretaries, not the other way around. Then he turned to his National Security Advisor. “Can he do that?”

“In a manner of speaking, Mister President. The power to which the Secretary of Defense referred does exist. It was included in the act as a safety provision in case a grave national emergency required a very sudden change in our defense posture. It was never intended as a means by which the Secretary could circumvent the standard budget process. However, fortunately, the possibility that it may be misused was foreseen and a safety catch was installed.”

The Seer leaned forward and pressed a button on the intercom. “Lillith, honey, will you bring in Volume Seven of our contract with the United States Government? Marked to Article 666, sub-section four.”

Lillith came into the room, the volume open in her hands. Taking it, the Seer surreptitiously ran a finger to check the ink was dry, a gesture that got him Lillith’s best “what do you take me for, an amateur?’¹ look.

“Mister President, this section of our contract with the US Government provides that when a disagreement over funding between Conference and the Secretary of Defense causes the latter to withhold funding allocated by the former, the dispute shall be referred to the Contractors, that’s us, for arbitration and resolution.

“As the representative of the contractors, 1 must say that I feel bound to support the elected representatives of the people over an appointed official,” Lillith started making little choking noises at that, “and advise that you, as President, over-rule Secretary McNorman’s opinions. The Conference appropriations and allocations should be allowed to stand. The final decision is, of course, yours sir.”

Johnson relaxed slightly. “I agree. Thank you Seer. Secretary McNorman, your initiative is overruled, the Conference Report funding allocation stands. You will execute them according to the provisions made by Conference. This meeting is adjourned. Seer, if 1 may speak with you for a moment?”

“Mister President. I must pro...”

“I said this meeting is adjourned, Robert. Now.”

After the room emptied, Johnson looked at his notes. “Seer, does Article 666 sub-section four really contain that provision?”

“It’ll be there when Secretary McNorman looks for it, sir.”

Johnson nodded. “The goddamn bastard though he could railroad me. Ramsey Chalk put him up to it. That legalism has the Attorney General’s smell all over it. You know he told me we were all war criminals for what we did to Nazi Germany? Tried to tell me there was no difference between us and them. Even said our bomber crews and everybody involved should be hauled before a war crimes court. You know his latest idea? Some assembly of all the nations where international disputes can be referred for solution. One nation, one vote. Majority rules. Calls it The United Nations. Where’d you put a thing like that Seer?”

“Ground Zero, Mister President?”

Johnson snorted with laughter. “That’ll do. I run this country, I make the decisions and there’s no way I’m going to turn that over to a bunch of deadbeat jawboners. You know what really gets me? That proposal Robert tried to force through, it would kill our aviation industry dead. Texas lives on its aviation industry, I’m not going down in history as the President who pauperized his own state. That scheme of his would destroy me. He did have one point though; our regular army is terribly weak.”

“Deliberately so sir. America has a long history of intolerance for the maintenance of a large standing army. Navies are a different matter, they don’t live on home soil and Air Forces are seen as a version of the Navy. We have a small standing army its true, but we do have a large and powerful reserve we can mobilize if we need it. All history teaches us that countries that have large standing armies get tempted to use them. Eventually they start getting used for things that are not in the national interest. They get committed to actions that are far from any areas than are of primary national concern. Eventually, the nation gets tired of taking casualties and we end up unable to sustain force commitments when they are a vital national interest.

“That’s why our national policy is not to fight our enemies but to destroy them. If an issue is important enough for us to get involved, its important enough to destroy our enemy. If it isn’t that important, we shouldn’t be involved. That’s a primary reason why our strategic forces are based around bombers, not missiles. We can send our bombers out, our enemy can see we mean business and, assuming he sees sense, we can call them back. Once missiles are launched it’s all over, they can’t be called back or their attacks aborted. Depending on missiles is a suicide pact. It’s like two cowboys fighting a duel on main street at high noon - at one pace range and armed with sawn-off-shotguns.

Johnson nodded. A political operator without equal in Washington, he hated the idea of making a decision he could not later reverse, modify or compromise. At the Conference table, Lillith was collecting up the documents for secure storage, brushing her heavy black hair back when she bent over the table to collect a pad that had migrated to the table center.

“That assistant of yours, I wish I had a dozen like her. Where did you find her?”

“She had a dispute with her previous employer over positions, so we hired her sir.”

“You lucked out. She’s an angel.” “No, Mister President, she isn’t.”

The King Tut Club, Cairo, Egypt

The music was provided by a reasonably good imitation of an American swing band. Perhaps a little old-fashioned by modern standards but suited to the clientele. Mostly rich tourists from America and the Mediterranean Confederation with some from the Triple Alliance and a few from Northern Europe. And then, of course, were the local luminaries who wanted to show off their “modernity” by going the places the tourists went and doing what the tourists did. There was a floor show as well, one that was allegedly Egyptian but was really straight Wilson, Keppel and Betty with no Wilson, no Keppel and a lot more Betties.

What made the King Tut different from the other nightclubs that serviced the tourist trade in Egypt was its food. Despite the dated music and tacky floorshow, the King Tut was actually a first-class restaurant. Even more remarkably, it was the British who were responsible.

The British armistice with Germany in 1940 had left Egypt in a state of confusion. Just over a week earlier, Italy had declared war on Britain and France, The British position in North Africa seemed hopelessly outmatched. British Army General Percival Wavell commanded 40,000 Dominion soldiers caught between 200,000 Italian troops in Libya and 250,000 to the south in Ethiopia and Somaliland. Wavell’s immediate response to the Italian declaration had been a bold gamble. He’d thrown a small force into Libya, seizing a few border positions and, essentially, doing little more than show the flag. The Armistice, just nine days later, had left the overwhelmingly outnumbered Wavell in the almost incredible position of having won a victory, albeit a purely symbolic one, that his enemy had been left with no means of reversing.

In doing so, and although he had no means of knowing it, Wavell had struck a blow that was to have profound long term consequences. During his negotiations with Germany, Lord Halifax made it quite clear that maintaining the Suez Canal under British control was a vital and non-negotiable interest. The problem was that it was by no means clear whether Wavell and the forces he commanded actually considered themselves bound by any British government decisions. Most of the rest of the Empire had already given a very clear negative to that question but Wavell had kept quiet. Mussolini hadn’t, he wanted the British out of Libya and he wanted the Italians in Egypt. In the end, the negotiations came down to one thing, the Suez Canal was considered as being vital by the British; it was not vital to the Germans. The German government agreed to a status quo in North Africa and its surrounding areas and told Mussolini if he didn’t like it, he would be on his own.

Mussolini’s reply came on August 17, 1940, two months after the UK/German armistice and two weeks after the peace agreement. The Italian Army under Marshal d’Armata Rodolfo Graziani invaded and occupied British Somaliland, threatening merchant transit through the Red Sea and cutting of the British from India. The attack went relatively well on land, the capital of Berbera was evacuated on the 14th and the garrison was withdraw by sea to Aden.

For the Italians, though, the sea war was a disaster. The Italians had a small fleet in their Red Sea, base at Massawa, seven destroyers, eight submarines and two torpedo boats. Within five days, three of the submarines had been sunk and one captured intact. One of the submarines managed to sink an Indian sloop before being destroyed. As a result, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and South Africa, all now acting as independent countries, declared war on Italy. Over the next few weeks, the rest of the Italian Red Sea fleet was methodically hunted down and sunk.

Four weeks after the assault on British Somaliland, Graziani reluctantly invaded Egypt under pressure from Mussolini. Under his command, the Italian Tenth Army recovered the captured border posts, then crossed the border into Egypt. The sheer momentum of the Italian assault carried them all the way to Sidi Barrani, 65 miles inside Egyptian border before the attack came to a halt. At that time, there were barely 30,000 British troops standing between 250,000 Italian soldiers and Cairo. However, Graziani didn’t know that and chose to stockpile fuel and ammunition while fortifying Sidi Barrani as his main operational base. Aware of the overwhelming force that Graziani could deploy once that base was completed, Wavell sent his best field commander, General O’Connor to raid the Sidi Barrani base and destroy its supply stockpiles.

The raid was expected to be difficult and the British anticipated heavy casualties. Instead, the Sidi Barrani defenses collapsed almost without a fight and O’Connor seized the moment. He turned his raid into a full-scale assault, drove the Italian Army out of Egypt and then launched a full-scale invasion of Libya. Within a month, he had advanced in Cyrenaica and taken almost 130,000 prisoners. Simultaneously, the assault to drive the Italians from East Africa started. Eritrea in the north was invaded from the Sudan by largely Indian forces, while East African and South African troops attacked Italian Somaliland from Kenya to the south.

With one army rampaging through his North African provinces and another sweeping through Italian possessions in the Horn of Africa, Mussolini was in despair. In February 1941, he appealed to his German allies for assistance, only to be told “You have made your bed. Now go whore in it.”

The Germans were already gearing up for the invasion of the USSR and unimportant sideshows against already-neutralized countries were anathema to them. Hitler swore that not a man nor a round of ammunition would go to aid the Italians in North Africa. Eighteen months later, Mussolini would have his revenge when an overstretched Germany demanded troops for service in Russia. Vichy France and Halifax Britain refused and were occupied as a result. Mussolini supplied just enough Italian troops to avoid that fate but the Italian force in Russia was small and never fit for more than rear area duties. Quite without realizing it, Wavell had been responsible for bringing about a decisive split in the German-Italian Axis.

However, that still lay in the future. Before then, Mussolini had to face the fact that he was being defeated. The capital of Italian Somaliland, Mogadishu, fell on the 25th of February, after which Wavell’s British-Australian forces advanced northwest into Ethiopia. British Somaliland was recovered by early March 1941, with all Italian resistance ending in the horn of Africa by the end of the month. It was rumored that Mussolini had had a stroke or nervous breakdown on hearing the news.

Certainly, when he re-appeared he was a changed man. The bombastic self-confidence had gone and he negotiated a cease-fire that recognized the status of Egypt and the Horn of Africa in exchange for a withdrawal from Libya. Significantly, the deal was negotiated with Wavell and the authorities in Cairo; the London government under Lord Halifax was never even consulted. By April 1941, a delicate, tenuous, but lasting peace had been established.

For the rest of the war, Cairo’s ambiguous status, undefined sovereignty and geographical position made it a hotbed of espionage, subversion, treachery, double-dealing and international chicanery that was to become legendary. The atmosphere of the city in those days was best caught by the immortal Humphrey Bogart/Ingrid Bergman film “Cairo.” People who pretended to be insiders insisted that the “Rick’s Bar” featured in the film was modeled on the King Tut Club. Real insiders knew that “Rick’s Bar” was actually inspired by The American Club a few doors down from the King Tut.

The King Tut itself had been founded by the pursers and stewards from a P&O liner that had been trapped in Egypt when everything started to fall apart. It had quickly gained a reputation for excellent food and wine, to the point where the German, Italian, French, various British and American intelligence organizations had an informal agreement to keep the King Tut as neutral ground. For five years, secret agents who had been industriously trying to kill each other a few minutes earlier, would dine on adjacent tables in uninterrupted, if strained, peace.

Post-war, when Egypt became a truly independent country, the King Tut management had sold out to local interests but the reputation and standards of the club had been maintained. It had benefited from the upsurge in tourism that had started when air travel had become commonplace with the huge American Cloudliners. Now, it was crowded.

Looking out over the floor, Achmed Faowzi was a happy man. Still early in the evening, the clientele had settled down for the long haul. Another prosperous night meant happy owners and a substantial commission for Faowzi. He earned it and he knew it. For how long, that was another matter. There was an edgy, uncertain air in Egypt now, as if the country was living on the edge of a volcano. For that was exactly what it was doing. The green fundamentalist stain on the map that had started in Afghanistan and Iran had spread across the map of the Middle East and had now reached the Egyptian border.

There was a young couple entering the club and Faowzi sized them up quickly. Both were Arabic but the man was in a western-style tuxedo and the woman in a fashionable evening gown. Probably a couple of the young business owners who were turning Egypt slowly into a modern country. As Faowzi watched, the man fussed around the woman a little too much. A wife or mistress? Faowzi watched, interested by them. Then he saw the woman’s waist was slightly thickened, she was pregnant. That explained it. A young man and his pregnant wife, their first baby probably, and he was overdoing his care for her. Understandable, and touching. Faowzi had five children and he’d got over such things long before.

As the couple reached the body of the club the wife leaned over and whispered in her husband’s ear. He smiled at her and she set off for the lady’s rest-room on the other side of the floor, joining the group of women who were gossiping by the door. Her husband joined a crowd of men at the bar, almost exactly opposite her. Then, Faowzi saw the wife wave at her husband.

Faowzi couldn’t see properly. The interlocking blasts from the two human bombs at opposing sides of the room devastated the King Tut Club, and also had done something to his eyes so that all he could see was blurs. Then he realized it wasn’t just his eyes, the smoke and dust in the room was a fog nobody could penetrate. There was nothing left of the women waiting by the rest room or the men at the bar, just smears and stains. The girls in the floor show had caught the worst of the blast wave, the rags of their gaudy costumes and sequined outfits were mixed up with ghastly lumps of unrecognizable flesh. Perhaps they were the lucky ones. Many of the guests were still alive but had been hideously mutilated by blast and debris. Arms, legs blown off, bodies ripped open, faces mutilated beyond recognition.

Screams, whimpers and weeping started to penetrate through the wool that seemed to surround Faowzi’s ears. Even as he watched, a blurred unrecognizable figure on the debris-ridden ground moved, its intestines snared on the ground underneath it. The figure collapsed again, and was still.

Faowzi felt somebody take his arms and lead him out of the catastrophe. A rescue worker, an ambulance man. As he looked back on the devastation he realized the King Tut Club wasn’t neutral ground any more.

Sheikh Ijlin Mosque, Cairo, Egypt

“Allah drowned Pharaoh and those who were with him. Allah drowns the Pharaohs of every generation. Allah will drown the little Pharaoh, the dwarf, the Pharaoh of all times, of our time, in our land. Oh, people of Egypt, the Egypt of Islam and Arabism, the Egypt of civilization and history. I am amazed at some of the clerics of the nation who cooperate with their treachery. I am amazed that they are trying to keep the nation away from Jihad and they issue Fatwas according to which we should not rise to defend Islam, against calf worshippers or fire worshippers. Aren’t they Muslims? Why Egypt, Oh Muslims? Wake up. You’re being attacked because of your religion. Islam is being attacked for a number of reasons: there are economic and security reasons. There are reasons stemming from personal vendetta, there are historical reasons, and there are religious reasons. Hence we have no choice but to start a war. The only way to remove the shame is to topple down the Egyptian regime. Just as Egypt is sacred so is also the lands of Islam, because the Prophet said so. All the lands of Islam will be united in the Caliphate and the Middle East will become a cemetery for oppressors.”

The crowd had poured out onto the streets and rampaged towards the business center of the city. That was where the agents of the Great Satan, the businessmen and idolators who polluted the pure land with their filth, plotted their evil schemes. Only the night before, two heroic martyrs had struck at them where they fornicated and destroyed them in the midst of their debauchery. As they surged down the streets towards the offices and banks of the business district, they found their first victims. A cab containing a young man in a western business suit was stopped, turned over and set on fire though not before the passenger had been dragged out and kicked, beaten and slashed until all that was left was a mass of unrecognizable rags. Not far away, in a doorway a young woman lay screaming and holding her face. Probably a secretary sent out on an errand, she had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many of the rioters carried bottles of acid to pour over the faces of women who were not decently shrouded in their burkas.

By the time the police riot squad had arrived on the scene, the crowds had merged into a single, raging mob, streaming down the roads in an apparently unstoppable fury. The riot squad had been ordered to contain the surging mass within the sections of the city it had come from, but that was easier said than done. In truth, the police came from backgrounds not so very different from the rioters and they had heard the sermons also. They went through the motions of containing the crowd, but their hearts weren’t in it and they fell back before the mob, slowly handing control of the streets over to them. As they gave ground, the howling mob pursued them, catching the sluggish and turning them into the same unrecognizable scraps as their other victims.

There was another alternative to the police riot squad. As the Government lost control of the streets, it was that other riot control force that took over, one that was run by the Egyptian Nationalist Party, not by the local authorities. Intended primarily as an anti-coup force, the Gendarmerie were far better armed and equipped than the local police. They arrived in armored busses and their first order of business was to stop the slow retreat of the police.

The first indication the original riot squad had that the rules of the battle had changed was the sound of pistol shots immediately to their rear. Those of their number that had tried to fade away from their duty were lying in the roadway, shot in the back of the head. Now, it was certain death to go back, and certain death not to stop the advance of the cacophonous swarm it front. With the Gendarmes behind, forcing the police to hold ground, the advance of riot stopped.

That didn’t end it. Containing the riot was one thing, dispersing it was another. The mob was contained, certainly, but it still existed. There was an answer to that as well, one contained in two large bus-like vehicles that pulled up behind the lines of beleaguered riot police. Safe behind the now-steady control line, their engines revved up and white jets shot over the police line, plowing into the rioters. Water cannon.

The operators were good, some kept the jets high, hitting the rioters in the face and chest, the power of the jets sweeping the rioters off their feet, hurling them back into each other. Others kept the jets low, knocking the rioters legs out from under them. Legs and arms broke, jaws were crushed and people drowned as the remorseless water jets drove the mob back. As they fell slowly back, the water cannon started to split the mob into smaller groups. Sometime, there would come a point where the groups would be too small for the mob to maintain its group identity and it would dissolve into a mass of terrified civilians. Then it would be over.

Only those who had organized the riot had expected the water cannon. As the mob had pushed forward, they’d moved onto the roof tops with Molotov Cocktails, glass bottles filled with gasoline and fitted with a crude fuse. The bottles arced down, flaring in the line of riot police and hitting the water cannon trucks. Now, the gendarmes and their pistols were the lesser of the threats facing the riot police and they started to edge back again.

The water cannon backed up also, their jets hosing the ground, washing the burning gasoline towards the mob.

Even that might not have been enough; but the Gendarme commander had expected the Molotov Cocktails and had a lesson for those who used them. Unnoticed by the mob and its organizers were a series of small trucks, scarcely bigger than taxis. Only they were blue, armored and had a turret. With a long-barreled gun.

As the mob surged forward in the wake of the volley of Molotov Cocktails, a roar and plague of fireflies filled the street. The armored cars were equipped with 14.5 millimeter machine-guns and they were firing armor-piercing incendiary - tracer ammunition. They didn’t make the mistake of firing over the heads of the crowd, reinforcing its sense of invulnerability, instead they fired directly into it, the high-velocity API-Ts tearing through three, four or five bodies before the heavy bullets finally came to a halt.

Up above, helicopters cruised over the rooftops, their door gunners spraying the Molotov cocktail throwers from above. Normally, in military work every fourth or fifth round was a tracer but this time was different. Every round left its streak of fire behind, demonstrating the sheer volume of fire that was being poured into the rioting mob.

The crowd couldn’t take the deadly machine-guns. Those at the front broke and ran, trying to get away, somewhere, anywhere away from the swarms of fireflies that were tearing them apart. Those at the back of the mob continued to press forward, and in the middle, the two surges collided, fighting to get through each other.

As the armored cars lashed the mob with their heavy machine-guns, piles of bodies started to mass at each intersection. The opposing crowds were getting in each other’s way, and effectively the mass of people formed into a single large, static target. Eventually, even the organizers couldn’t hold the crowd and it broke into a mass of individuals frantically trying to find shelter from the armored cars and the helicopters overhead. As they ran, the survivors heard the staccato crackle of pistol fire as the Gendarmes finished off the wounded.

Eventually, it was over. The streets were empty except for the emergency crews clearing the bodies that carpeted the main streets of the slum. As night drew down, they took the corpses away for burial. The shaken riot police buried their dead and quietly asked themselves what had come to their city. The gendarmes cleaned their weapons, reloaded their vehicles and waited for the next time. In the slums, the black-turbaned Mullahs once again started their sermons, inciting the people to go out again the next day and attack the security forces that had martyred so many of their friends and relatives.

CHAPTER FOUR: SKIRMISH

El Khalq, Cairo, Egypt

The city of Cairo was dying. Port Said Road had become the front line, between the administrative heart of the city and the mosque districts of El Khalq, HI Dhab and El Kamaliya. It was a battle of wills and of endurance. Could the Mullahs pour people into the streets faster than the gendarmerie could pour bullets into the people? Would the people run out of the will to die before the Government ran out of the will to kill?

All over the city people looked to the pall of smoke that darkened the sun and wondered at the madness that was taking place. Not all the people of the city however, over the last few days posters showing the acid-mutilated faces of women who had dared to appear in public unveiled had started to surface all over the cities. The potential victims were taking no chances and the sight of women in enveloping burkas was turning what had once been a vibrant cosmopolitan city into something else entirely.

The casualty rates were running enormously in favor of the security forces, dozens, perhaps hundreds, of rioters killed for every security man lost. Not that the police and Gendarmerie casualties had been light After the first day, there had been improvised mines laid in advance of the riots. The rioters themselves had been supported by rifle fire, most of it wildly inaccurate and hopelessly ineffective yet every so often single shots would pick off key members of the security force teams. The mob itself was killing few security personnel but the explosions and snipers were racking up an increasing score.

Yet the problem was that the essential need to contain the situation in the capital was pulling in the police and gendarmerie from the countryside and there, too, the situation was deteriorating. Government-built secular schools were being burned down and their teachers killed. Coptic Christian churches were meeting the same fate, the buildings burned, the priests killed, the congregations scattered and hunted down. The police had been either killed by mobs or had decided discretion was the better part of valor and had left to safer regions. Buses had been ambushed on the roads and their occupants killed, rail lines had been blown up at key points. The ability of the population to move freely had gone and with it the ability to support a functioning society. It wasn’t just the city of Cairo that was dying, Egypt itself, as a modern state, was on life support and losing the battle to stay breathing.

Cairo remained the key. The day there started the way all the earlier ones had, the hysterical ranting tirades from the Mullahs and the screaming mob pouring into the streets to attack anything that wasn’t part of their creed. They’d driven the riot police back but then the Gendarmerie had arrived to stiffen them and their heavy machine-guns had driven the rioters back. Now, the Port Said Road was a no-man’s land, carpeted with the bodies of the rioting mob that had tried to cross it into the Abdin, the area of the city occupied by the Ministries and financial houses.

On the east side of Port Said Road, the rooftops were occupied by the groups armed with Molotov cocktails, attempting to throw their firebombs across the road at the police and Gendarmerie who held the west side of the road. It was just that bit too far though, and all their actions achieved was to attract the attention of a Gendarmerie helicopter that swept parallel with the road, spraying the east-side roofs with machine-gun fire.

As the helicopter passed, two men scrambled from cover, one carrying a longish tube with a complex looking box mounted on top. The gunner waited until the helicopter was moving away from them, its engine exhaust silhouetted against a cool part of the sky. The box on top of the launcher warbled then gave a continuous growl as the seeker locked on. A squeeze of the trigger, a blast from the tube, and a brown-gray spiral of smoke shot up from the launcher, heading straight for the Gendarmerie helicopter.

The pilot saw the approaching threat and made a fast climbing turn to get away but the missile followed him, homing in on the heated exhaust of the engine. The warhead explosion wasn’t great, the missile was too small for that, but it was enough to cripple the tail rotor. The helicopter spun out of control, stalled out and crashed in the middle of Port Said Road.

“Sehr Gut.” The gunner’s assistant clapped him on the back then started to reload the launcher. It was the work of a minute to slide another round into the tube, plug in the connector and ready the second missile for tiring. Two slaps on the gunner’s shoulder and another lethal surprise was waiting for the next Gendarmerie helicopter to show its face.

Further along the line of buildings, more two-man crews left their cover. With the threat of the helicopter gone, they could do something about the armored cars with their deadly heavy machine-guns. The crews were armed with Type 19s, a Chipanese copy of the Russian RPG-2 anti-tank rocket. Not a particularly accurate weapon but the range wasn’t that great. The warhead didn’t have that much penetration either but the armor on the Gendarmerie vehicles was intended to stop rifle fire at the most.

The rockets streaked out from the rooftops, heading for the Gendarmerie positions on the west side of the Port Said Road. A boiling cloud of black and orange marked the spot where one of the armored cars had been hit and penetrated. More salvos shot out, more of the little armored cars were hit. Then, the mob boiled out from the east side of Port Said Road and howled its way across. This time, with the concentrated machine-gun fire broken, they made it and started to spread through the maze of small sidestreets and alleys.

The gendarmerie had no choice, they had to pull back. The mob was already bypassing their positions, threading through the streets and threatening to isolate the armored cars and riot control troops. As the blue vehicles fell back, the local population saw what was happening and hysteria ran rampant. They also streamed for the west and the illusory safety of the river.

The mob had broken through opposite the El Ezbekiya part of the city, the area largely inhabited by Coptic Christians. Those that dropped everything and ran for their lives would make it to the river. Those that stopped for anything, for a vital document, a possession or a member of the family did not. The mob ran them down and tore them to shreds. It was start of a massacre that would go on for days.

In the northern part of the El Ezbekiya, the great Coptic Cathedral was already in flames. Some of the Christian inhabitants had sought sanctuary within its walls, now they died there as the cathedral was burned with them inside. Further to the west another part of the mob burst into the Egyptian Museum and started the destruction of its contents. As thousands of years of Egyptian history, from priceless relics of the earliest Pharaohs to a portrait of King Farouk, were smashed, burned, and shredded, the Curator begged one of the black-turbaned Mullahs to stop the devastation. “We need nothing other than Islam” was the only reply he got before the mob tore the Curator and his family apart. Even before he died, the entire museum complex was already ablaze.

For it was fire that marked the passage of the rebel horde through El Ezbekiya. The front line of their advance could be traced by fire, burning buildings, overturned vehicles and the funeral pyres of people unfortunate enough to have been caught in the street. From above, it would have looked like a burning map, with the brown, charring edge of the paper preceding the flames being the people desperately running for shelter. The whole mass of refugees from the El Ezbekiya were funneling in on two bridges that lead to one of the islands in the center of the Nile. Those who faltered or hesitated were crushed under the stampeding humanity. There was no way that the bridges could carry the mass of people trying to escape over them. It was only the small groups of Gendarmerie still desperately trying to hold back the swarming rioters that allowed as many to escape as they did.

The other thing that saved some of the refugees was that they were running west while the mob was swinging south, towards the Abdin. There, the occupants had warning from the fate of the occupants of El Ezbekiya and had started their flight early. Also, the roads out were better, wider and there were three bridges, not two. Adding in the greater number of Gendarmerie and the lack of narrow alleyways for the mob to infiltrate past their positions, things were in the Abdin’s favor.

Most of the government, bank and insurance company people there managed to escape, first to the Geziret island, then to the west bank of the Nile. Nevertheless, by evening all of Cairo on the East Bank of the Nile was in the hands of the Mullahs and their mob. The Egyptian National radio station was also in their hands and, from it, their leader made his broadcast. Claiming to be a representative of the pious Egyptian people who had risen up against the idolaters and blasphemers who had subverted the country, he begged all good Islamic countries to send the Egyptian people help in their effort to bring their country back to the true faith. As it happened, he was an Iranian who had arrived in Egypt for the first time three days before, but surrounded by the burning city and the screams of the massacre, that seemed an unimportant detail.

The Oval Office, The White House, Washington

“Dean, what the hell are we going to do about this? Perhaps State can give me an straight answer. All I’ve had from the Attorney General is a lecture on human rights and the infamy of the Egyptian government and the Secretary of Defense keeps telling me if we’d done things his way, this would never have happened. The National Security Advisor keeps telling me ‘on the one hand this, on the other hand that’ and outlining options. Will somebody give me a straight damned answer to a simple question?”

“Mister President, in defense of the National Security Advisor, we pay The Business to study problems and outline the available options and their probable consequences. Then we, as the Cabinet, select the options we think are best. The Business doesn’t set policy sir. We do that.

“In this case, our options are pretty limited. The Egyptian Government is collapsing and has lost control of most of the country. An hour ago we received word that the Sudanese Government has applied to join the Caliphate. Already, Sudanese “volunteers” are crossing the border in large numbers to assist their “brothers” in Egypt. We anticipate Somalia will follow very soon.

“If we’re going to intervene, we are going to have to do so in force and do so very quickly or there won’t be anybody to intervene on behalf of. I understand we have a Marine brigade in the Eastern Mediterranean that we could land in Egypt but that’s hardly enough to make any difference. If this was a regular war, we could flatten the entire Caliphate in hours but that isn’t the case. To straighten Egypt out at this point, we’d need a massive and infinite-duration deployment and we just don’t have the troops. To get the troops, we’d have to gut our strategic offensive and defensive forces and that would harm our position all over the world.

“Anyway its really questionable if we could do it. It’s that industrial thing again, sir, we were out of power for twenty years and we’re only now getting a handle on what the situation really is. The machine tool shortage is the problem and its hitting us all over. We came into office with plans and priorities and everywhere we’ve gone we’ve found that damned industrial bottleneck is strangling us.

“It is the opinion of the Department of State that, despite Secretary McNorman’s assertions, we lack the capability to intervene in this situation. What we’re seeing from Egypt, Mister President, is a done deal. It’s the culmination of a long process. Most devastating of all from our point of view, the existing Egyptian Government had lost its assumption of authority. Sir, when you go out, your driver stays on the right hand side of the road and stops when the lights are red. He never thinks about it. That’s a government’s assumption of authority. People obey because it is the Government. The Egyptian Government has lost that. So if we send troops to restore the situation, we’re supporting a lame duck, a lost cause.

“At the same time Mister President, we can’t just leave this. We’ve made that mistake once already and its haunting us to this day. Back in 1951, a guy called Mohammed Mossadegh seized power from the then-ruler, some glorified warlord who called himself The Shah, and got himself elected as Prime Minister. By 1953, he virtually controlled the country, he was quite popular by the way, and was taking the country off down his own path. Now, back then there was a CIA plan to remove him from power but President Patton had a virulent dislike of covert operations of that type and he vetoed the whole thing. Mossadegh stayed in power, the Shah left for exile and that was that.

“The problem was anticipatable to anybody who’s studied history. Mossadegh had started a revolution but he wasn’t radical enough for the radicals, wasn’t religious enough for the religious, wasn’t corrupt enough for the corrupt and wasn’t conservative enough for the conservatives. He ended up just like the Shah before him, representative of a small clique who told him what he wanted to hear. The problem was that he didn’t actually represent any major strand in Iranian opinion. He was an average, you know, he appealed to just enough people to just the extent necessary to gain superficial popularity.

“In Iran back then, there were two threads of belief that people subscribed to. One was the glory of Persian history and tradition, that was represented by the Shah, and the other was religion, represented by Khomeini and his cohorts. When Mossadegh deposed the Shah and forced him into exile, he sacrificed the respect and reverence that conservative parts of society had accorded to the Shah. That eliminated any chance of him getting any real support from anybody in that faction no matter what he did. Mossadegh lacked support from the traditionalists, thus the religious elements could gain power almost unopposed. That was how the Caliphate came into the world.

“I think the Mossadegh lesson is quite clear Mister President. This situation cannot be allowed to stand but, also, we have to be extremely careful what we commit ourselves to. Mister President, in a sense we rule the world, we can destroy any enemy we wish and those enemies can do nothing to save themselves. Our power, lies on that perception and we cannot do anything to endanger it. In a very real sense, our power relies on an aura of invincibility which is credible because it has never been discredited. And, it’s never been discredited because we’ve been careful never to get into a position where it can be discredited. When we do something, we do it via proxies. Usually, the Russians or the Triple Alliance. At the moment, we’re not involved in the problems of Egypt and there is no immediately obvious reason why we should get involved. Sending our own troops into Egypt would be a disaster, I thank God we haven’t got the forces needed to do that so the option isn’t open to us.

“Also, Sir, Egypt isn’t the problem. It’s a symptom of a much larger problem, the Caliphate is growing fast but its growing because its picking off the low-hanging fruit. If we look at what they’ve actually achieved, they’ve simply consolidated what was more or less in their power anyway. Every time they’ve tried to move outside that area, they’ve been hammered. Turkey, the Southern Russian provinces, attempts to extend Caliphate influence there were total failures.

“By the way Mister President, it’s interesting to note the Caliphate calls its current expansion “The Third Great Jihad”. Jihad means Holy War. The First Great Jihad was the original Arab expansion after Islam was founded, the Second was the Turkish outthrust. This is the Third. The question arises, what is going to happen when there is no more low-hanging fruit?”

“Dean. You’ve told me what we can’t do. Now tell me what we can.”

“Mister President. We have to learn. We have to watch the Caliphate and understand how it works. The Russians described the Caliphate as an organization that hangs together because its individual members hate the rest of the world a little more than they hate each other. A very good description that implies there are more internal divisions in the Caliphate than are apparent at this time. The obvious one is the religious divide between the Sunni and Shi’ite sects but there are others as well. Those divisions are something we can play upon in the future.

“So, the Caliphate has weaknesses that we can exploit, it has limitations we can pursue. Soon, it’ll be hitting the natural boundaries of its growth and we have to make sure that it is contained when it reaches those boundaries. Some, we don’t have to worry about, others we do. We helped the Triple Alliance a little when it suited us, now we must help countries that are in the front line against the Caliphate. That means mostly southern Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa. For example, with Somalia dropping into the Caliphate’s orbit, that means Kenya is in the front line.

“The North African littoral is a write-off. The Italian and French hold there is tenuous at best and a good sneeze will boot them out. The French won’t listen, but the Italians will. Tell Mussolini to cut their losses and arrange to get out with as much dignity and as little fuss as possible. We’ll make good any losses they suffer. Since Libya and the rest will fall into Caliphate hands anyway, its better it happens quietly and causes as little damage as possible.

“That’s another good reason why we shouldn’t have troops in Egypt by the way. There’ll come a time to do something about Egypt but it isn’t yet. We should be concentrating on getting ahead of the curve and anticipating what the Caliphate will do. If we charge into Egypt now, we’ll be getting behind the curve, seen as reacting to others, not dictating to them. That’ll be more damaging to our worldwide position than anything else I can imagine.

“One other thing, Mister President. The Caliphate has an eastern edge as well as a western one. Its expanding, or attempting to expand, into territory held by the Triple Alliance as well as the Middle East. That’s another situation we’re going to have to watch, but there, we have a much better hand to play. The odds are the Triple Alliance can hurt the Caliphate a lot worse out there than we can at this time.

“We’re facing a worldwide war Mister President, the first since The Big One ended World War Two. The one thing we must avoid is becoming so focused on one particular part of that war that we neglect the others. May I counsel you Sir, as emphatically as I can, to meet with the Triple Alliance as soon as possible. Especially the Ambassador-Plenipotentiary from Thailand, I am advised that her understanding of insurgency problems and irregular warfare is unmatched.”

LBJ nodded thoughtfully. “The Attorney General has described the Ambassador as an international assassin who should be brought to trial before an international court. He’s even swallowed the old Chipanese conspiracy theory that she assassinated Gandhi. The problem with Ramsey is that he has a little mind, the only way he can cope with people who’s achievements exceed his own is to denigrate them at every opportunity. I want to meet with the Ambassador but not here in Washington. A Presidential visit to the Triple Alliance perhaps? A summit conference on world affairs would do nicely. Dean, find an auspicious event in Thai history for late this year or early next, preferably the hundredth anniversary of something or other, and set up a Summit Conference, held in Bangkok to honor that event.”

“Very good Mister President. I’ll set the wheels in motion.”

The President leaned back in his seat as Dean Rusk left the Oval Office. A summit conference would be a good way of discussing the problem The Caliphate posed worldwide. Before it took place, they’d have to arrange a series of agreements, trade, representation, cultural exchanges and so on, to be announced after the meeting. Only fools left the results of negotiations to the negotiations themselves.

That left the problem of the Attorney General. He talked too much and couldn’t accept that his statements had consequences. Consequences that were of immense use to America’s enemies. Furthermore, he was trampling across the boundaries that separated the responsibilities of varying departments. His absurd posturing was interfering with the smooth running of State, Defense, the Treasury, everybody. Yet, he couldn’t be booted into the outer darkness, he was a favorite of the Kennedy clan and they ran the Democrat Party.

LBJ was well aware that the Kennedy clan considered him a placeholder, keeping the Presidential seat warm for John F Kennedy’s brother, Robert. They’d made it an open secret they planned to run Robert Kennedy as the Democrat candidate in the 1968 election. They didn’t have much choice, with John F dead,

and Edward with the death of his brother and the resulting reckless endangerment conviction hanging over him, Robert was the only real option left. The prospect of a Kennedy in the White House filled LB.J with foreboding.

Conference Suite, Hyatt-Regency Hotel, Woodley Park, Washington

Ploesti Night. The night when Strategic Aerospace Command gathered to honor its own. There would be smaller gatherings at all the SAC primary operating bases and even smaller ones where SAC units were stationed on temporary duty. This one, though, was the centerpiece. There were 50 tables in the suite, 20 people per table. The room was sorted by rank, the exalted ranks of Generals sitting at the tables on the right, the lowly Airmen sitting at those on the left. Yet, the tables, the settings and the meals were the same. Just as they were for the top table, even though, this Ploesti Night, the President himself was attending. Ploesti night had two functions, the award ceremony reminded people of what happened when things were done right. The fact it was Ploesti Night, the anniversary of the raid where every single B-29 invoked had been shot down reminded people of what would happen if things went wrong.

President Johnson looked at the array of Air Force Blue in front of him. Normally, the Secretary of Defense attended Ploesti Night but McNorman’s performance over the last few months had made his appearance here politically unwise. The last thing LB.I wanted was for a senior member of his administration to get hissed “off the stage” by a room full of America’s heroes. The effects of the insult on McNorman’s ego would be too dire to contemplate; he’d probably try to cut funding for the entire Air Force. So he’d come himself, avoiding the problem, getting some good publicity for his Presidency and honoring the men who defended it.

Even the Targeteers were here tonight, sitting quietly in the shadows. It was odd, Johnson thought, wherever they were, they always seemed to be in the shadows. He’d suggested their senior personnel ought to be on the Top Table but he’d been politely yet firmly declined. They were just the hired help, the Seer’s assistant had said, the honors belonged to those who acted, not those who moved paper.

The meal had finished and the coffee and brandy had been served. Now, the main business of the evening was under way. The series of presentations, awards for a wide variety of professional achievements. The big ones came first. The LeMay Trophy for highest level of operational readiness, to the 100th Bomb Group with their B-52Hs, The Dedmon Trophy for overall bombing accuracy during Red Sun. The Angel Eyes Shield for best performance by a Strategic Recon Crew, an RB-58C called Marisol had won that three years running but this year they were in Italy on TDY so an RB-58D Lady Hawk from the 45th had taken the prize. Then a new one, the Yeager Cup, for best performance by a Strategic Fighter Group, won by the F-108s of the 357th.

Prizes for groups, prizes for individual aircraft. Prizes for performance, prizes for safety, prizes for professional achievement. As LBJ presented the award to each winner, his photographer took a picture of the event so each would have a memento of his meeting with the President. Another private grin, if McNorman tried that, they crews would be sticking pins in his picture within 24 hours. Prizes for officers, prizes for enlisted personnel. They were running through those now. Getting to the end of the awards at last. Thank God this wasn’t a Hollywood style ceremony with artificial tension, faked surprise and forced theatricals. Every award winner here had been given at least 24 hours notice of their prize and they’d had time to write a thoughtful two-minute speech of thanks. It hadn’t been required for the winners to have their speech approved by higher authority but the wise ones - and that was all of them - had done so.

The Master of Ceremonies took a drink of water and returned to his list. “And now, for the Association of Old Crows Shield awarded to the electronic warfare engineering cadet who has shown the highest level of professional advancement in their first year of service, I am proud to call on Airwoman Selma Hitchins.”

LBJ raised his eyebrows slightly. A young black woman was walking across the open space towards the top table. The Master of Ceremonies passed him the small shield with the black crow embossed on the front and he shook the young woman’s

hand. “Congratulations, Airwoman Hitchins, a fine start to what I hope will be a long and distinguished career. There’s always success waiting for a fine American who’s prepared to work hard and do what it takes.” Then he dropped his voice so the conversation was private. “Turn a little, hold the shield so the cameraman can see it clearly. That’s right. I’ll have some extra copies sent to you so you can send them home.”

“Thank You Mister President”. Hitchins stepped onto the podium, made the usual introduction and then started her speech proper. “I must admit I had an unfair advantage in winning this award. You see Crows are black too.”

A roll of laughter went around the room. LBJ nodded, smart girl. She’d got rid of the race issue in the first line by making people laugh about it. Although LBJ had noted that, while southerners had laughed immediately and freely, northerners had hesitated a fraction, wondering if it was acceptable to laugh about race. Hitchins was quickly thanking her instructors, her parents and teachers and a police officer whose glowing character testimonial had eased her acceptance into the Air Force. She made a quick comment on how important electronic warfare was likely to be in the future and the impact of the new generation of computers then, after two minutes to the second, she’d finished and was on her way back to her seat, clutching her award.

LBJ watched her sit down and accept congratulations from the rest of her table. Something worried him about the episode. That girl had won an award against competition from the whole of the rest of the Air Force cadet intake. To do that she had to be very, very good, even to get nominated, let alone approved. So why should her first words have to be an effort to defuse a potential awkwardness over her color? Damn it, she shouldn’t have to do that, her achievement spoke for itself. Why did she think she had to defuse an issue in order to be accepted? Then LBJ put his professional politician’s smile. Another award winner, this one for excellence in first year flight medical training. Another little speech, more photographs.

By 0100 the event was over, the Air Force busses were taking the attendees back to their accommodation. LBJ saw the Seer’s assistant checking off things on a clipboard and sent one of his Secret Service Agents to bring her over.

“I would like to go to the kitchens and service areas please. Can that be arranged?” The woman smiled and nodded, her mane of dense black hair shifting in a wave.

“If you would come with me Mister President”. She lead him through the serving doors at the rear of the hall, into the food preparation area. The staff there looked at their visitor and every motion in the room froze as they realized the President was with them. LBJ picked out the head chef and addressed him.

“Chef, I wanted to thank you and all your staff here for the efforts you’ve made on our behalf tonight. I know you all have families to go to and you have already worked longer and harder than we had any right to expect but I would like to thank you all in person. Chef, could you introduce me to your staff please?”

The Chef lead LBJ around the kitchen staff, introducing each one in turn. LBJ gave each one a quick handshake and a small White House medallion from a box carried by one of the Secret Service Agents. Less than ten minutes later, he was out and walking back down the service corridor.

“Won’t you also have a family to go to.... Lillian isn’t it?”

“Lillith, Mister President. No, I don’t have a family as such. The Business is my family now.”

“No husband or boyfriend Lillith?”

“No Mister President.” Lillith looked at LBJ strangely. The man had a reputation for being course-mouthed and boorish but there had been no sign of that tonight. He’d been polite and gentlemanly then and was being so now.

“I was married once but it didn’t work out.” She paused for a second, somehow, for some reason she couldn’t define, she wanted to confide in the President. “My husband was a control freak, everything had to be done exactly how he wanted it just so. Exactly this exactly that. Every little thing, he wanted to rule every aspect of my life. When I got pregnant I realized I couldn’t bring children up in that sort of environment so I ran away.”

LBJ looked at her and got hit by a feeling of ancient sorrow so deep that it seemed to have physical force. “He sent three of his thug friends after me. To bring me back. To ‘persuade’ me to return to him. Their means of ’persuasion’ was hurting me.” Then the feeling of sorrow was briefly, just for a split second, replaced by rage and for that brief LBJ got weird sensation that her eyes had turned red. It was just imagination of course, and a trick of light reflection from the red emergency exit signs. Before it could register properly, it was gone and her voice went back to normal. “When hurting me didn’t work and I still refused to go back, they killed my children.”

LBJ’s mind reeled under the simple statement. What sort of man could punish his wife by killing their children? In fact, he had an uneasy feeling he may have heard the story somewhere. Perhaps in an old newspaper.

“Lillith, it sounds hopelessly inadequate to say this but I am dreadfully sorry. As an American I am appalled such things could happen in my country, and as a Texan I want to lynch the people responsible. As President, I can do something about this. I will instruct Director Hoover to give this matter his personal attention so that those who did this to you can be punished.”

Lillith smiled. “Mister President that was a long time ago and very far from here. Far from America. But I am very grateful for your concern. Thank you Mister President.”

Presidential Limousine, Du Pont Circle, Washington DC.

Sitting in the back of his limousine as it swept through the night on the way back to the White House, Lyndon Baine’s Johnson was a profoundly troubled man. What had started as a minor engagement intended to spare his administration a relatively trivial embarrassment had ended up by worrying him deeply. Two woman had managed it, that black airwoman and Lillith. They’d opened his eyes to something of which he hadn’t been unaware, but also had never realized the full implications and meaning of before.

It was just plain flat out wrong that a skilled and intelligent woman who’d beaten out everybody else in her class should have to worry about the color of her skin. To almost apologize for it when making an acceptance speech for an honor she’d won fair and square. It shouldn’t happen, not in America, this was the country where people were supposed to be judged on what they achieved not who their families were or the position some ancestor had held.

On top of that, the horror story Lillith had told him still filled him with rage. He didn’t believe, not for one moment, that her ex-husband was outside America. If he had been, he would have been under a mushroom cloud by now. LBJ was sure about it. The words “they killed my children” still echoed in his mind and made rage boil up inside him again. Anyway, he was sure he had read that story somewhere. It disgusted him to think that a husband in America could even think of doing such a thing. In the rational part of his mind, he knew it wasn’t unique or even unusual. In fact, he had a terrible suspicion that if he asked for statistics on such events, he would find more than he cared to know about. That didn’t change the situation though. In a great society like America, such things shouldn’t happen.

A Great Society. Now there was a name to play with. Other people should have their eyes opened, just as his had been opened. It was impossible to legislate how people thought, but one could use the law to set examples and provide guidelines. To make people think twice about casual prejudice or accepting obscene brutality. One couldn’t do that of course without changing some of the environment people lived in as well. That’s what was needed, an effort to build a great society, to build a place where the meaning of man’s life matched the marvels of man’s labor.

That would have to be the basis of a new program for Congress, to create a society where people could be free to develop their talents as far as they could go. A program to give aid to education so that people could compete on equal terms, to attack disease and the decaying heart of the big cities as part of an effort to prevent of crime and delinquency. One that would beautify the countryside, and conserve the monuments from the past. Most of all, to develop the depressed regions of the country as part of a wide-scale fight against poverty. Damn it, there were millions of elderly people who couldn’t get needed medical attention, that would have to be corrected through an amendment to the Social Security Act.

It was a lot of legislation to be pushed through. Somebody would have to see it through, to watch over its progress and ease it through the inevitable dogfights. Ramsey Chalk, thought the President, that would be an ideal solution. It’s the sort of thing that the pretentious charlatan would relish. And, pushing through a legislative program that big would take up all of his time. He wouldn’t have the energy left to interfere with international politics. That would be a very good thing.

Chalk’s forays onto the international scene were a constant embarrassment and were getting worse by the week. This insane idea he’d had for the United Nations had just been the start, his latest fad was for an international criminal court where war crimes could be tried. Ramsey being Ramsey of course, the first people in the dock would be Americans. But, it wouldn’t happen. LBJ was firmly determined on that. If he gave Ramsey the job of shepherding The Great Society through, then that would keep his mind off such stupidities.

Unfortunately, Ramsey would try and do the job all too well. He’d spend the entire country’s GNP and then some. And still want more. So he’d have to have a check and a balance. LB.I nodded to himself. The Targeteers. They’d be given a study contract to validate and cost out Ramsey Chalk’s proposals and produce a working plan to execute them within a strict budget limit. LBJ had no illusions about welfare plans, left to their own devices, they grew like a cancer. So there would have to be boundaries and limits firmly established.

Of course, that brought another issue to mind. Of the Departments of the US Government, the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the National Security Council and the Directorate of Central Intelligence were all run under contract by The Targeteers. The Democrat Party had come to power quietly determined to change all that. Some wanted to do so because they honestly felt it was wrong for major parts of the US Government to be in the hands of private companies. Others resented the loss of patronage and the power to award plum, well-paid government jobs to favored cronies.

LBJ himself had entered the Presidency determined to return to the old ways of doing things. Now, he’d changed his mind. Compared with the other parts of the US Government, the parts run by The Targeteers were models of smooth efficiency. The reason, of course, was simple, if they didn’t run smoothly people got fired until they did. The Business, as the Targeteers called themselves, recruited and trained their staff and provided the Department as a functioning package. The Executive appointed the Secretaries to head the Department. Three of the four were working smoothly and the Secretaries in charge had been converts to the system. Only Robert and the Department of Defense were in constant conflict.

LBJ sighed. He knew what the problem was. Over in State, the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk had established perfect co-operation with The Business people running his Department. He told them what his policy was, where he wanted his Department to go and together, they’d explored all the consequences of the new policies. Then, once Dean had made the decisions, The Business had followed through and made sure they were carried out. Smoothly and efficiently.

In contrast, McNorman had treated his staff the same he treated everybody - like dirt. He’d given abrupt, preemptory orders without considering the consequences of what he was doing. The Business people running the DoD had worked hard to limit the damage his attitude was causing, but they couldn’t intercept all of it. LBJ thought grimly that McNorman would have to go. The problem was he was a favorite of the Kennedy family and they still ran the Democrat Party.

And that was yet another problem. When planning for a Democrat-run Government, it had been assumed that American industry dominated the world the same way American military power did. In the run-up to 1960, and then in 1964, they’d imagined American businessmen going around the world, doing what they wished, where they wished, in the same way SACs bombers flew where they wanted. Only it wasn’t that way at all. While not precisely in crisis, American industry was facing problems all of its own. The Democrat economic planners had made a certain series of economic assumptions and based their tax and development plans on those. Unfortunately, those basic assumptions had been wrong.

The basic problem was simple and had literally stared everybody in the face, only none of them had seen it. They’d looked at a map of Europe with the big black smoking hole where Germany used to be and not realized that the same big, black, smoking hole was where most of the world’s precision machine tools had been made. Before the Second World War, German industry had been the world’s major source for top end high precision machine tools. The total destruction of German industry had left a gaping hole in that market, one that was proving very hard to fill.

There were some bright spots, Swedish machine tools were almost as good as German and the Germans themselves had re-equipped Polish and Czech factories to make the tooling. That hadn’t been altruistic of course, the German plan had been all final assembly was done in Germany. Nevertheless, Poland and Czechoslovakia were becoming suppliers of good-quality machine tools. The catch was that they just didn’t have the production capacity to make up for the incinerated German factories. So, the supply of high-quality, advanced machine tools was a seller’s market with high prices and long delivery times.

This had some curious effects. One of them was that a whole industry had grown up, modernizing, reconditioning and rebuilding pre-war German machine tools. Another was that the machine tool issue had a direct bearing on how SAC operated. One of the reasons why SAC’s bombers were so aggressively deployed and so prominent in international affairs was to give the impression that they represented an industry that was at the cutting edge of technology and free of the constraints that were crippling other industries. That wasn’t true, the United States was as badly affected by the machine tool shortage as everybody else.

McNorman wouldn’t accept it but that was yet another reason why his demands to shift from bombers to missiles wasn’t possible - missiles required much more precise machining than aircraft and the tooling to do it in the numbers required just wasn’t there. The same applied to tanks; it was all very well to demand the construction of huge numbers of tanks but how were the turret rings to be made?

It wasn’t just the military sector that reflected the machine tool bottleneck. American cars were derided because of their big, lazy and inefficient engines. The Europeans with their smaller and more economical engines were held up as being the way of the future. The catch was that those small, efficient engines required much more high-grade machining than the bigger American motors. If Detroit went to European-style designs, they’d have to re-equip with the scarce advanced machine tools and that would impact directly on the rest of US industry competing for the same equipment.

It was a worldwide problem. American sources inside the new Triple Alliance aviation program had revealed that both the Arrow and TSR-2 programs were dropping behind schedule due to the shortage of high-end machine tools. Apparently, there were only four slide-way grinders (essential for making big machine tools) in Australia and the biggest grinder in the Southern Hemisphere was a 1930s German import. The Russians were being hit as well, even though they’d captured some equipment when they’d re-occupied the western parts of the country. The shortage of machine tooling was crippling their recovery from the Second World War and Treasury estimates were that it would be the end of the century before that problem was overcome.

It was also a simple problem, German machine tools were undoubtedly the best but they weren’t around anymore. The easy answer that ‘America would take up the slack’ just wouldn’t cut it. The American industrial genius was in production methods and machines, not the basic tools of engineering. Engineers would take a rebuilt 1930s German tool over a new-built Polish, Czech or Swedish machine any day and they’d take any of those three over an American one equivalent. The world may run on love, or so the kids said, but it spun on bearings and bearings were in short supply. A study done by The Business had suggested that The Big One’s destruction of German industry had set the world back at least a decade in the key areas, and that was cascading through the whole industrial production system.

LBJ sighed. Running America had seemed so simple when the Democrats had been in political exile. They hadn’t had a clue what the real problems were or how intractable they could be. Perhaps this was the lesson that they’d forgotten, that some problems don’t have solutions, all you can do is work around them and find other routes to where one wanted to go. Yet everything linked into everything else, change on thing and it echoed through the systems and turned up in the most unexpected of places.

He caught himself in the car’s driving mirror, he could see that the strain of the job was already aging him. The Presidency was a killer, Both President Dewey and President LeMay had been aged beyond their years by the strain of the job and it had, quite literally, killed President Patton. As his car swept through the White House gates, LBJ reflected that at least his “Great Society” plan wouldn’t impact on the problems caused by the machine tool bottleneck. He’d thought the Presidency would deal with the great issues of the day and initiate sweeping changes in the Great Scheme of Things. He’d been right too, only he hadn’t known that the great issue of day was the supply of machine tools and The Great Scheme of Things ran on bearings.

Aviano Italian Air Force Base, Italy

Eddie Korrina struck an exaggerated pose. “Mister Ford, Major Kozlowski is ready for his close-up now.”