Crusade!

“You want to get banged out somewhere over Libya?” Kozlowski growled. “Nobody would miss you. Just have to report you as having become existentially divergent and that’s that.”

Ever since he’d become involved in the film industry, his leg was being pulled mercilessly. It wasn’t fair, really it wasn’t. He’s spent his first evening with Sophia Loren and her husband answering questions about SAC and Operation Jungle Hammer, the Myitkyina operation. Then, after some diplomatic strings had been pulled behind the scenes, he’d been seconded for a week as a technical advisor to the film “Mission to Myitkyina.” Then, he’d found out something that people who’d never been on a film set would find hard to believe. The first day had been fascinating, the second routine, the third and subsequent mind-crackingly boring.

The upside was he’d become firm friends with Carlo Ponti and his family.

Kozlowski had earned his keep as technical advisor though. The first thing he’d been shown was the set that was used for filming scenes in a B-58. The prop makers had done an excellent job, the nose had been built so it split in three sections so the pilot’s cockpit, the Bear’s Den and the Electronics Pit could be filmed from varying angles but somebody had done them a bad turn. The pictures they’d been given to work from were the wrong aircraft, a Navy PB5Y, not a SAC RB-58. It had circular dial instruments, not the tape gauges that SAC had adopted and the radar screens in Eddie’s Bear’s Den were completely wrong, just the single screen for the ASQ-42. He’d got them some pictures of Marisol’s instrument panels and the set had been changed overnight. They’d also missed the bulge under the nose for the ASQ-42 surface attack radar; the PB5Y carried that in the nose where the RB-58 carried its ASG-18. Still, at least they hadn’t painted it dark blue.

He’d also been amused to discover the misconceptions that Italians had about how Americans. It had taken some time to persuade Sophia that American wives didn’t spend all day wearing cocktail dresses and swilling martinis. American daytime television had a lot to answer for. Also, that bringing children up, getting them to school and doing all the other things parents did were the same the world over, even when one of the parents did fly a nuclear-armed bomber. He’d also had to give the actor playing the RB-58 pilot, an American called Eastwood who worked in Italy, a quick few lessons in how SAC officers behaved on and off duty. Well, how SAC would like the public to believe its officers behaved on and off duty anyway.

Still, his time in the wonderful world of cinema was over at last and he was back to doing what he was supposed to. Flying.

“Right guys, we’re back in the real world at last. Mission orders. The television news showed you Egypt has fallen apart, the Sudan and Somalia have joined the Caliphate and all is most certainly not well with the world. There are refugees streaming out of Egypt, by air as well as by sea and over the land frontier. Our hosts are doing their best to collect them and give them some form of refuge. I guess a refugee camp is better than what’s going on over there now. The problem is, they can’t find them all so they’ve asked us for help.

“We’re to fly recon missions over the area, land and sea, find the refugees trying to escape and steer Italian rescue teams in to get them. In case you think this is a milk run, let me tell you something. The Caliphate people are trying to find the refugees as well, and when they find them, they kill them. So we’ve got to find them first and it’s up to us to protect them until they can be picked up. We’re pretty confident that if we get in the way of the Caliphate, they won’t take too kindly to our appearance on the scene. Mind you, they don’t take too kindly to us when we are off the scene.

“We’ll be carrying four GAR-12 Sparrows and four GAR-8 Sidewinders for self defense. Plus eight GAR-9s, four air-to-air and four for anti-surface work. We probably won’t need them, our run is over the sea this time, looking for small craft and anything else that can carry people trying to escape. But Spider Woman is doing the run along the Egyptian border and Tiger Lily will be running along the Egyptian coast towards Palestine, trying to map out any military movements along there, the Caliphate may well try something with them. If they do, then we’ll come to their support. So this whole business could get very ugly, very quickly. In the future, we’ll be overflying the territory the Caliphate is in process of seizing, partly to find out what is going on, partly to show that we can. That is also likely to get ugly.

“We also have a secondary mission. Some refugees are flying out in Egyptian aircraft and the Italians are staging an airlift of their own from an airbase on the coast. They’ve got a lot of the gendarmerie and police people plus their families out that way, how long before they have to shut down, that’s anybody’s guess. Until they do, if the Caliphate threatens those aircraft, we have orders to remove that threat.

“One more thing people. The Italian military are the butt of a lot of jokes, especially after what the Brits did to them back in 1940. They don’t have many people and, compared with the kit we operate, their equipment is crap. But, they are good people who are trying hard to do the right thing here. Let’s not let them down, right?”

Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Chipan?

Kawachi had almost made it. Almost, but not quite, Even with Indian help, the pumps had lost the battle to hold the flooding perimeter about an hour out from the port. Admiral Soriva’s last action had been to take her out of the shipping lane and into the reefs where he’d beached her. In honesty, even that was a bit of an overstatement, it was an open question whether he’d beached her or whether she’d sunk far enough to hit a reef. Still, she’d settled with her main deck above water.

Soriva thought that if he was a German he’d claim she was only damaged. What was that old joke he’d heard years before? “If a German captain yells ‘scuttle her’ before his ship sinks, the Germans claim a strategic victory. If he yells ‘scuttle her’ after she’s sunk and he’s swimming, they claim an operational victory. If one of his descendants yells ‘scuttle her’ at any time he’s in the same ocean as the wreck, the Germans claim a tactical victory.” Soriva reflected that, since he’d never given a scuttle order, he’d lost.

But in a real-world sense, he’d won. Kawachi had arrived with her nuclear-tipped missiles still on board and already they’d been stripped off the wreck and moved to batteries along the coast facing mainland China. With a range of over 500 kilometers, they were a healthy deterrent against an invasion. Naval engineers were going over the wreck of Kawachi while he watched, trying to determine if she could be refloated and repaired, if not, what else could be stripped from her wreck and salvaged for future use.

The question was, what would the new regime in Tokyo do? They had the power to wipe Taiwan as thoroughly from the map as the Americans had obliterated Germany. If they chose that path there was little that anybody in Taiwan could do to stop them. They could make Tokyo pay for it, that was certain, but they couldn’t stop it. What was stopping Tsuji and his fellow conspirators from obliterating Taiwan was political, not military.

They’d seized power on the basis that the Reformers had deviated from the path of glorious destiny and turned their back on the possibility of further extending Imperial power. The reaction of the military to those claims had been mixed. A few hadn’t accepted it at all and they were now trickling into Taiwan. A few, of course, had accepted the whole line. The balance, they were waiting on events, to see and hear what would happen, to judge the new regime on its deeds not its words.

So the new regime was committed to expansion and to the conquest of new territories. It would be a mortal blow to its credibility and to its moral authority if its first act was the nuclear incineration of one of its own provinces. In fact, the rebellion of that province was, on its own, bad enough. Almost any action taken in reprisal would make it worse. If nothing was done, if the situation was placed on the “to do’ list, a problem to be addressed when the time was right, then it could be downplayed and presented as one of those local difficulties, a thing of no great import. Masterful inactivity was the most tempting, indeed almost inevitable, course of action. And, the longer action was delayed, the harder doing anything about it would become.

The great trick now was to avoid goading Tsuji and his conspirators into doing anything. There had been one row about that already, a group of hot-heads had tried to demand that Taiwan declare its independence and establish itself as a new country, standing on its own feet. They didn’t seem to understand that if Taiwan stood on its own feet, it would be cut off at the knees. They had to remain, nominally at least, part of the Imperial Japanese Empire. That way, as a rebellious province, Tokyo would have to step carefully and find a way to a solution. In fact, under those circumstances, Tokyo may find the current status of Taiwan useful. If malcontents and dissenters found refuge on the Island, they wouldn’t be causing trouble elsewhere in the Empire. However, declare independence and all that would be gone, Tokyo would be forced to do something.

From Tokyo’s perspective, they wouldn’t have too many options. Even now, an amphibious operation across the Formosa Strait would be a hazardous undertaking and every week that passed made it more so. There were enough military units here to put up a stout defense and they also were growing stronger as the local Taiwanese joined up. That was a well-kept secret, one the Chinese definitely did not like mentioned. They habitually claimed that Taiwan was Chinese and it wasn’t.

Taiwan had originally been settled by the Dutch and Spanish and the local population were their descendants and those of the workers they had brought from elsewhere in the Pacific. Plus a few pirates of course. It had been almost a hundred years before the Chinese had invaded and occupied the islands and started to bring their own people over. Even then, the Chinese had never been more than a minority on the Island. When the Japanese had taken over in i895, their administrators had been startled to find that, outside the small ruling elite, the islanders didn’t even speak Chinese.

No, Soriva thought. Keep the situation cool, keep it quiet, keep everything low key. Don’t draw too much attention to the problem. If a delicate balance could be struck, if the political cards were played properly, then Taiwan could get away with its rebellion for a good number of years. Perhaps enough to end up with Taiwan taking over the Empire.

Officer’s Quarters, USS Austin LPD-4, Eastern Mediterranean

“Commander Thomas Sir. One of the Marines, Gunnery Sergeant Esteban Tomas, wishes to speak with you.”

“Very good. Send him in.”

The SEAL team had arrived on board the Austin a few hours before. Their specialized insertion craft were now housed in the well-deck aft and the SEALs themselves were settling into their quarters. It hadn’t taken a genius to work out what was going on here. Egypt was collapsing and falling into the hands of the Caliphate, there were streams of refugees trying to get out before the borders slammed shut. Some of those people would have intelligence and insight invaluable to the United States. The SEALs were the acknowledged experts in getting into heavily-guarded places, finding people and escorting them safely out again without anybody interfering. Or, to be more precise, without anybody who attempted to interfere living to tell the tale. Thomas guessed his men would be finding the senior people in the refugees, government, military, whoever, and bringing them out.

He guessed why the Gunnery Sergeant wanted to speak with him. Probably wanted to transfer from the Marines to the SEALs. That couldn’t be done, the SHALs recruited from the Navy and the Marines had their own covert operations group, Fleet Recon Force or FRF. Their job was a bit different from the SEALs; FRF had to get into heavily guarded places as well but once in, their job was to stay there, watch what was happening and report back. Good question which was harder, getting out with civilians in tow or staying put and reporting back.

“Sir, Commander Thomas Sir.”

The Marine was standing in front of his desk, rigidly to attention. “Gunnery Sergeant Tomas?”. Thomas frowned slightly, the man looked vaguely familiar. But then, most Marines did. The Corps did that to people.

“Sir, thank you for seeing me Sir.”

“No problem Gunny. At ease. However, you do realize that we do not allow transfers from the Marines to the SEALs. If you want to get into our line of work, I can put you in touch with the Fleet Recon recruiter.”

“Sir, I realize that Sir. But I saw your name on the arrivals list this morning and I wanted to thank you Sir. For this Sir.” Tomas put a dog-eared and aged business card on Thomas’s desk. One side had a cartoon of a seal balancing a ball on its nose, the other a laconic “He’s OK” and the signature of a Lieutenant Commander Jeff Thomas. “You remember Sir, ten years ago. You and your people were rescuing a young American girl who’d fallen into,” Tomas grinned “bad company down in Mexico. Sir, You gave me that card and suggested I see the US consul.”

Suddenly it snapped into focus. Thomas had been assigned to rescue a young American girl, Ellen Case, who’d run off from a holiday tour and got in over her head. It had been a ridiculously easy job, just a matter of finding where her bus had been ambushed, following the trail and then extracting her. The highlight hadn’t been the rescue itself, it had been throwing a fat, lazy, corrupt police chief out of a window. That, Thomas regarded as a treasured memory.

However, he remembered the leader of the bandits who’d attacked the bus. He had the brains to understand that hurting the American girl was a death sentence so he kept her safe. More, at the end, hopelessly outgunned and surrounded, he’d still managed to behave with dignity. Thomas had thought the man had potential and hinted he might like to try the Marines. Obviously he had taken the hint.

“Good God yes. I remember now. Sit down Gunny please. Gunny, you’ve changed a lot since then. You take the oath?”

“Sure did Sir. Did my five, got sworn in as a citizen in the morning, re-upped in the afternoon. Now doing life so to speak. You know Sir, shooting up that bus was the smartest thing I ever did..”

Thomas agreed but couldn’t say so. “Can I offer you some ginger ale Gunny?” American warships were dry but “ginger ale” was a winked-upon subterfuge for special occasions. And this was certainly that. The two men clinked glasses.

“You know Sir, I’ve learned a lot since then Don’t think you could sneak up that close to my boys now. Not in daylight anyhow.”

“Want to try some day, Gunny?” Thomas’s face was positively wolfish. His SEALs had left a trail of Marine units wondering what had hit them and learning from the experience. “Be a good exercise for us both. You set up and defend a target and we’ll infiltrate. Sort of training exercise we do all the time. We’re going to be here for a while, until this Egyptian thing cools down and possibly longer than that. Give me a couple of days to get my people settled in and I’ll speak to the command and arrange for a schedule.”

“Sir, You’re on Sir. But do you know whatever happened to that girl you rescued? She was cute.”

“Still is Gunny. We took her back to the States and returned her to her parents. Who were mightily displeased with her behavior and even more pleased to get her back alive. A bit later, she moved to Tennessee for a while then to Virginia where she got a job with Newport News. That’s where we bumped into each other again, I was with the Teams at Little Creek. One thing lead to another and she’s Mrs. Thomas now.”

“Sir, congratulations Sir. You got kids?”

“One at school, one on the way. How about you Gunny? Hooked yet?”

“You bet Sir and I got you beat. Wife at home, three kids in school. Met my lady when I was training in California. Been back down south a couple of times as well. Try to catch the kids there before they go bad. You know Sir, the people down there still talk about that Police Chief you threw through his window.”

The ‘ginger ale’ glasses clinked again. “Gunny, when this mess is over, come down to Little Creek and I’ll show you round the training facilities we have. Maybe there’s some stuff that might help your people out. You got the new rifles yet?”

“The ‘fourteens? Sure Sir. We dumped the old Garands before this cruise. Guys are taking time to get used to it though. Hard job to persuade them the twenty seven - fifty nine can do the job when they’re used to firing the old thirty oh six.”

“You think you got a problem Gunny? Somebody tried to convince us to switch over to a point-twenty-two for God’s sake. Had the company bringing the rifle around. Looked good but a twenty-two varmint cartridge? And the rifle was made of plastic would you believe? Rattled like crazy.

“For now, we’ve still got the old greaseguns. We’re looking for a new point forty five submachine gun. Trouble is it’s got to take a silencer and that’s a pain. Means the bullets got to be subsonic so we’re stuck with the old point forty five.” Thomas got his wolfish look again. “After all, we don’t want everybody to know where we are.”

Aviano Italian Air Force Base, Italy

Major Kozlowski viewed the piece of fish on his plate with the gravest suspicion. Aviano was filling up quickly and becoming a regular SAC base. What had started as a week-long courtesy visit had stretched to a month and then turned into a full-scale temporary deployment. The rest of 1/3O5th had arrived so there were now 24 RB-58s on the base and a full group of F-108 Rapiers, the 357th, was filtering in.

That was the bad news. After all, when there had been four SAC aircraft and their crews here, they’d eaten at the Italian officer’s mess where the food was beyond exquisite and the wine was better. Those happy days were gone for now, with almost 100 aircraft on the base, they had their own mess and their own cooks. The American cooks had realized they were up against serious opposition from their Italian rivals almost immediately and they’d organized a series of “American Regional Specialty” days. Today was Friday, the specialty was Cajun and, therefore, with impeccable logic, the evening meal was blackened fish. It looked, well, suspicious somehow.

“Hey Frenchy, you’re Cajun, what did your momma call this when you were growing up?”

Pierre “Frenchy” Thibodeaux poked the blackened fish despondently. “A mistake?” he offered a bit hesitantly. There was no actual guarantee the fish was either dead or a fish and he didn’t want it coming back to life on him. He thought carefully and decided not to chance it. The cramped Bear’s Den of an RB-58 wasn’t the place to come down with salmonella. Opposite him, Kozlowski had come to the same decision. Anyway, in his case, he was joining Carlo and Sophia tomorrow for a day in their country home and they’d feed him properly. “Mike, what happened today? Anything you can pass on.”

RB-58C “Marisol” Eastern Mediterranean, 6 hours earlier

It was amazing, from up here the Eastern Mediterranean really did look the way it was supposed to. The coastline was shaped the way the maps showed and the sea was the right color. In the Bear’s Den, the radar picture was showing much the same thing except it had paints the eye couldn’t see. One of them, a big one, was to the west of them. The USS Shiloh and her battle group. Others were much, much smaller. The two nearest were Farfalia and Minerva, 700 ton Italian coastguard ships.

They were patrolling the waters, looking for refugees fleeing from Egypt ahead of the Caliphate takeover. Technically, Marisol and her crew were just idling around on a training exercise, in reality, they were helping the Italians by vectoring them in on the refugees, the Boat People as the press was calling them. They were also covering the Italians against attack. The Caliphate was grimly determined to kill as many of the refugees as they could and they’d do the same to anybody who got in their way.

They could do it too. The Caliphate naval crews were operating a new naval weapon in these waters. Small patrol craft, fast attack craft the naval people called them, armed with a pair of heavy anti-ship missiles. They lurked in port and only came out when they wanted to kill something. A week or so earlier, there had been a small tug, crowded with refugees, trying to cross the Mediterranean from Egypt to Greece. One of the Caliphate’s FACs had attacked and hit it with one of its anti-ship missiles. The big missile had been designed to take down destroyers and it had made short work of the tug. There hadn’t been any survivors and the wreckage looked like matchwood. The Caliphate had answered diplomatic protests by stating that anybody who tried to leave the Caliphate without permission was an apostate and apostasy was punishable by death.

So Marisol was providing cover for the Italian ship and also protecting any refugees in the area. They were on the radarscope as well but faint flecks, so small and indistinct that they were hardly visible. Still, it was possible and it was a job worth doing. In the Bear’s Den, Eddie Korrina suddenly looked down at the scope. The situation had suddenly become complicated.

“Boss, we’ve got problems. I think there’s some refugees down there, must be a raft or something, it barely shows. Whatever it is, Minerva must have it as well, she’s picking up speed and moving to investigate. The bad news is, there’s some bogies out there also. Two at least. They’re on a collision course also and they’re hauling ass. My guess is hostile FACs.”

“Roger that Eddie. Xav, keep a watch on emissions. I’m going to order up some squid.” Kozlowski changed channels on the radio. “Shiloh this is Marisol we have a problem developing here. Italian corvette picking up refugees possibly threatened by unidentified surface craft. Need some back-up here guys.”

“Launching ready flight. Two Leatherneck Phantoms coming your way. They’ll orbit out of sight. Communication is Romeo-Quebec. Verification as per book. Good luck Marisol

Kozlowski started a gentle descent. Speed and altitude were life but in this situation he could drop to 30,000 without too much risk and it would give Eddie and Xav much better coverage. Below them, the Italian corvette closed on the contact, an extemporized raft built of oil drums and timber with at least a dozen people on it. How they’d sailed it as far as they had was anybody’s guess. Off to the east, the two Caliphate FAC were closing on them.

“Vampires, vampires!” It was Xav in the Electronic’s Pit. “Enemy fire control radars, identification Square Tie. That confirms it, Mike, Djinn-class FAC-M. They must be warming up to fire. Designating them now as Bandit-One and Bandit-Two. They’re reaching for us too, but their Pot Head radars don’t stand a chance. I’m jamming them anyway.”

“Eddie, shift to air mode, paint those targets. Get a pair of the Sparrows on line. If those Djinns fire, I want the missiles hit as soon as they leave the tube. Get ready to do anti-radar shots as well.” Kozlowski flipped channels. “Romeo-Quebec this is Marisol twenty eight.”

“Marisol this is Romeo-Quebec. Twelve. We’re closing fast on you. We have contacts to the east and ESM detection from that bearing. Are we hot to trot?”

Kozlowski checked the book. 28 plus 12 was forty. OK. Everybody was who they said they were. “Hold please Romeo-Quebec. We just have threatening radar emissions at this time. They tried to lock on us though and that is a terminal mistake.”

He wasn’t joking. It was one of SAC’s guiding principles, threaten a SAC aircraft and it would eliminate the threat, If that meant taking out the country the threat came from, so be it. The result was predictable, nobody sane threatened SAC aircraft.

“Boss, they’ve fired. One vampire airborne, targeted on Minerva” Korrina had already fired off a pair of Sparrow Ills, they was streaking down towards the anti-ship missile heading for the corvette. From the pilot’s seat, Kozlowski saw the gray-white trails heading down towards the black streak of the anti-ship missile. One explosion was a white ball on the sea surface, a miss. The other turned the black streak into an orange fireball. “OK Eddie confirm that, one Vampire down. We have missile fire Romeo Quebec. They’re all yours.”

Cockpit F4H-3 Phantom H “Tisiphone”

Colonel Scott Brim firewalled the throttles and the dark blue Phantom leapt across the water. Ahead he could see the black and orange fireball where the anti-ship missile had been shot down. There was a certain poetic justice about it he thought, an attempted act of murder being struck down by a bolt from above. The two hostile Djinns would be just behind that blast. The catch was he had to get in fast while the crews were still working out what had happened and getting another missile warmed up. If he timed it right, that missile would never get out of the tube. The Square lie tracking radar only had a very limited arc, the bows on the Djinn had to be pointing almost directly at the target. If he could force them to turn they couldn’t fire. Of course if he was really lucky, they’d open fire on him.

He could see them now, two glorified speedboats with the big, clumsy missile hangars perched on the stern. Behind him, the concussion wave from his passage was throwing up a wall of spray, there was no doubt that they’d seen him. Please, please let them open fire on me. Brim was actually praying.

As if in answer he saw a line of red blobs floating out from the bow of the lead Djinn, quickly followed by a second stream from the craft behind. The Djinn only carried a single gun mount, a triple 25 millimeter forward. ‘Thank you God,’ Brim thought, then poured in the reheat and swept Tisiphone up in a steep climbing turn. Obediently, the two streams of tracer followed him, just lagging behind that little bit.

Before the gunners could correct, Alecto was making her run. The gunfire drawn away, she could make this pass good and solid. Suddenly she seemed to erupt in flame, brilliant orange fire spreading along her wings and under her belly. Then, she also was making a climbing turn, leaving the massive salvo of unguided rockets to do its work.

The two Phantoms had the same load, 38-round packs of 2.75 inch rockets. Three packs under the belly, three on each inner wing station, two on each outer. A total of 494 rockets. The analysts had worked out that at a given range, there was only a limited area that a FAC could occupy in the time the rockets took to get to their target. So, the packs were designed to fill that area with rockets. In effect, Alecto had fired a giant shotgun at the lead Djinn. It really wasn’t fair.

Brim watched as the sea erupted in a boiling elliptical mass of white, green and orange-brown as the salvo swamped Bandit-One. Even as he did a wingover and curved down, it was subsiding and beneath it, there was .... nothing. Just a few oil stains and fragments of shattered debris. To the east, Djinn-Two had turned and was running for the coast. Brim let her go, the primary job was to protect the Italian corvette and the refugees. There was no guarantee a second pair of Djinns were not out there, already lining up for an attack. Anyway, Marisol was overhead and she could make Bandit-2 vanish in a very emphatic manner.

Alecto formed up again on Tisiphone’s wing and Brim lead them back over the Italian corvette. She was stopped now, alongside some crazy looking contraption crowded with people. As the two Marine Phantoms swept over, Brim thought the raft looked like the things he and his childhood friends had put together on summer afternoons by the lake. Those people down there hadn’t taken the contraption out to splash around in a local lake, they’d sailed it hundreds of miles across the open sea. What in the name of God could be happening that drove people to take such desperate risks?

The Italian corvette crew had nets over the side of their ship and were going into the water to pick up the refugees. Brim wished them well and took Tisiphone up to where she could watch over them

Aviano Italian Air Force Base, Italy

“And that was more or less it. We stayed up top watching over the situation until Tiger Lily relieved us and we came back. Advice? Make sure you have support ready and waiting, when the situation blows, it blows fast. Shiloh has birds waiting on the catapults to go, take advantage of them.

“I’m not so sure it was a good idea for us to come down, it improved radar coverage in terms of what we could pick up but it shrank our horizon and put us into an area where we could be intercepted.

“The Djinns are pretty much helpless against us, they have that triple 25 forward but its only useful against things that fly low, slow and close. I’d guess they have those shoulder-fired missiles as well but intel says they don’t work against anything more than 8,000 feet up.

“The Caliphate people can’t be dumb enough to keep sending them out unscreened though, after they’ve lost a few, they’ll start trying to act smart. Fighter cover will be the first thing they try. I don’t think the Caliphate has any real warships otherwise they might try operating FACs with proper ships.

“One other thing Pete. Buy those Italian Navy crewmen a drink when you get a chance. What they’re doing takes real big brass ones. It’s not just that they’re out there with those poor old corvettes but we watched them go into the water to help the refugees. You’ve heard of the human bombs the Caliphate loves so much. How long d’ya think it’s going to be before they start putting them in ‘refugee boats?’ And how much of a mess they’ll make of the rescue ships?”

Conference Room, White House, Washington

“Dean, what’s just happened in the Mediterranean? And why?”

“Mister President. One of our aircraft was flying a routine mission over the Eastern Mediterranean when it observed an Italian corvette rescuing a group of Egyptian refugees. They saw two Caliphate warships fire a missile at the Italian rescue ship so they shot down that missile and called in assistance from the Shiloh. Two Marine F4Hs arrived, did a run to see what was going on and one of the Caliphate warships opened fire on them. The F4Hs returned fire, sinking one of the Caliphate ships and forcing the other to disengage. The Italian corvette completed its rescue work safely and returned to port. That’s our story Mister President and we’re sticking to it.”

“Now what really happened?”

“We are providing air cover for the Italians doing their humanitarian rescue work. The Caliphate are killing every refugee they can get into their gun-sights. They blew a tug out of the water just a week ago. Usually just the presence of our aircraft is enough to keep things cool but this time it escalated. The public story is pretty much correct if you exclude the fact that we were covering the Italians.

“Anyway, we’ve had a diplomatic protest from the Caliphate. The warship sunk was a Djinn class fast attack aircraft, crew of nineteen. The Marines really did a number on her, no survivors. The Caliphate are accusing the crews of murder and demanding we hand them over for trial and execution. As your Foreign Secretary Mister President I recommend we tell them to go and initiate a maternally incestuous relationship.”

“Ramsey, what is the legal position here?”

“Mister President, in my opinion the pilots in question are guilty of a war crime in that they sank a warship in international waters. I rule that we are obliged to comply with the Caliphate request and extradite them to Caliphate custody for trial. I understand a Strategic Air Command aircraft was also involved and was probably carrying nuclear weapons. That also is a war crime.”

“Mister President, I must object in the strongest possible terms.....”

“Please, Dean. I will answer this. Ramsey. You misunderstand a fundamental part of our relationship. You do not make rulings. You, along with the other members of my Cabinet, advise me. Then I issue rulings based on my decisions that may, or may not, include your recommendations as I see fit. It is clear to me that our aircraft were acting in self defense and to protect a neutral ship engaging in humanitarian rescue work. We will not just hand over our people in the manner you suggest. Is that clear Attorney-General?”

“Mister President, America has been acting in this highhanded and arrogant manner for far too long. It is time that we made clear to the world that we accept limits to our power. We must accept that we are answerable to the world community for our actions. We must make amends for the crimes that.......”

“IS THAT CLEAR ATTORNEY GENERAL?” President Johnson’s voice slashed across the Cabinet Room. Ramsey Chalk settled down in his seat, a small, sulky, reluctant nod conveying his acceptance. LBJ stared at him until he was happy that Chalk wasn’t going to push the matter further.

“Ramsey, the reason why I wish you to drop this trivial matter is that I have something much more important that requires your full attention. This incident with the Caliphate is an unimportant matter, the sort of minor flare-up that will be forgotten in a week or a month. State and Defense can handle this incident. I need you to undertake a legislative program that will change the face of America in ways that will last for centuries.”

LBJ started to explain his Great Society program, stressing the depth and extent of the changes that had to be made and the fundamental alterations in the financial and legal structures required. He stressed the importance of the legal issues involved, the complexity of which meant that the head of the Great Society effort would have to be Attorney General. By the end of his presentation, Chalk was leaning forward in his seat, his eyes shining in anticipation.

“Of course Ramsey, a program of this scale and magnitude requires a very high level of managerial expertise. Your own time will be fully consumed in supervising the program and coordinating between the varying departments. For this reason, we’ve approached the consultants who already run several Government departments under the direction of the appropriate Secretaries to provide you with a professional administrative staff. The contract has been accepted by them and they are recruiting the personnel while we speak.”

“Mister President I don’t see the need for such arrangements.”

“I agree with Ramsey Mister President. These people from ‘The Business’ are greatly over-rated. Why in my department I have discovered enormous waste and duplication. For example, there are two aircraft, the Air Force F-l 10 and the Navy F4H that are almost identical in performance and characteristics. If we had ordered the same aircraft for both services, we could have saved vast sums. I have found another such example. The Air Force B-58 and the Navy PB5Y are also nearly identical, again a joint program would have saved the country much unnecessary expenditure.” McNorman sat back in his seat, directing a smug smile at the National Security Advisor. The smile faded as Orville Freeman, the Secretary of Agriculture, burst out laughing.

“Robert, the F-1 10 and the F4H are the same aircraft, just different designations. Same for the B-58 and the PB5Y. Same aircraft, just the sort of joint program you’re talking about.”

“Secretary McNorman.” The Seer leaned forward. “We’ve found using different designations for the same aircraft used by the Navy and the Air Force is useful because the different services have varying requirements. But, the missile system designations are confusing and we are introducing a joint services system for them. Attorney General, we’ve found an ideal candidate for your new executive assistant. Lillith, will you bring her in please?”

Lillith ushered in a woman with hair as gloriously red as Lillith’s was midnight black. For a moment LBJ was envious until he saw her eyes. He’d been expecting the magnificent mane of hair to be matched with emerald green eyes, flashing with fire. Instead, they had the flat muddy green of pond slime and so lacked expression as to seem lifeless.

“Mister Attorney-General” Lillith said “I would like you to meet your new executive assistant, Naamah.”

Rosario, Surigao del Sur Province, Mindanao, Philippines

Evening Mass was over and the traditional entertainment was starting. The Cathedral was in the town center where it belonged, looking out over the grassy square with its statue of Rizal. Families were already sitting down there, enjoying the coolness of the evening and exchanging family news with their neighbors. Not all of them though, the younger girls, the unmarried ones had already started their evening promenade through the town then up the hill that dominated it. It was a dirt track road, but a good, wide and well-used one. There were rumors that the road was to be resurfaced, given black-top in place of laterite. The rumors might even be true this time, there was a lot of construction work going on in the area around Rosario.

The hill top was an example. It had always been the local government area, Rosario was the local capital after all, but the buildings had been few and poorly-equipped. In the last year that had changed. The government had built a new administrative block up there. Nothing elaborate, that was certain, but functional and, above all, new. There was a sports stadium up there as well and the high school children could play basketball on a proper court now. There was another new building up here as well, and that had brought the citizens of Rosario great pride for they could now boast of having their own University.

Yes, the new construction and all the new buildings were a good excuse for people to make the walk up the hill to see what was going on. That was only an excuse though, the Sunday evening promenade had been going on long before the construction had started. It would even affect some of that new construction for down the middle of the road were a series of crude benches. If rebuilding the road removed those benches, there would be civil war.

Traditionally, by the time the young women had reached the top of the hill and started down, the young men would be starting up. And that was the whole point of the exercise, as the groups of young men and women passed, glances would be exchanged. Sometimes a boy’s interest in one of the girls would be met with giggles or ignored but sometimes the girl would return the glance with one of her own. Then two sets of parents would notice and, if they approved, there would be a quiet meeting between them during the week. Then, the next week, the kids would exchange glances and leave their groups to sit on a bench together, decently separated of course, and carefully chaperoned, to talk and get to know each other. And the older women watching would smile knowingly and start to anticipate Rosario’s next wedding.

What nobody in the evening walk had noticed was a subtle change in the buildings. The boys were interested in the girls and the girls were interested in the boys and their parents were making sure that everything that took place did so in ways that placed nobody’s reputation in danger. Quite understandably, none of them thought to count the antennas on the roof of the government building. For, every week there would be one or two more added to the growing array.

Ortega farm, Rosario, Surigao del Sur

A few miles away from Rosario, in the hills that overlooked the town, Graciella Ortega was gathering vegetables from the farm. It was one of three her family owned, this one was for growing vegetables, some for sale and the rest for her family. There was a second farm down by the shore, that one grew pineapples and coconuts and other fruit. Finally, there was the main one, inland where it was sheltered from the storms that blew in. There the family bred water buffalo and chickens and other livestock. The Ortega family wasn’t rich but they ate well.

The vegetable farm was Graciella’s favorite, it was a two hour walk to get there, no mean trip for a woman who was already over sixty years old, but it had a wonderful view overlooking the town and its small harbor. Out to sea she could see the small islands that punctuated the coral reef, some were inhabited by a few families, others were not and the only visitors were fishermen sheltering from a storm. One was so infested by poisonous snakes, nobody dared go there. Still they were all beautiful, dark green ringed by white surf against the deep blue sea.

While she worked on the farm, weeding the field and gathering the food she needed, she could look at the view and it would make her feel good. Normally there were two people who worked the vegetable farm, looked after it and made sure that nobody took any of the produce. They weren’t there though, perhaps, Graciella thought, they’d gone down to the town for Mass or to meet friends. No matter. She continued to collect her basket of vegetables, her daughter’s fiancée was coming for dinner and this was an important event, deserving of a special effort.

She never heard the men come behind her, the first hint she had of their existence was when a cloth was flipped over her eyes and she was dragged backwards. A knee ground into the small of her back but the pull on the cloth continued so her body was bent backwards like a bow. She could feel the aging bones and disks in her spine screaming against the brutal treatment. Terror at the sudden attack combined with outrage and filled her with anger at the ill-treatment.

“Ortega your children work abroad, your daughter is married to a foreigner. They send you much money. You will give it to us. You will give us fifty thousand pesos each month or we will kill you understand?”

“It’s not true.” Graciella was trying to keep control of her voice but she could hear it shaking and was ashamed of her fear. “Two of my sons work abroad it is so but they have families of their own to support. I only have on daughter who is married and her husband is a sergeant in the army. It is we who send money to her for the army does not pay enough to support them.”

“You lie.” The voice was furious and loaded with spite. “We know the truth do not try to deceive us.”

“It is true, we are not a rich family. We do not have the money you ask.”

“Then we have no use for you.” Graciella felt a blinding pain in her stomach as a knife slashed across it. She felt herself falling down, her eyes still covered, then another, duller, pain as a boot crunched into her ribs.

Road from Morales to Rosario

Angel Hernandez was a very happy man. An Australian construction crew was building a bridge across the river between Morales and Rosario and their engineers were working hard during the week. It was a wide river, not deep, but enough to make building a bridge a major project. Once the bridge was finished, the road could be black-topped all the way. At the moment, the trip between the two towns was a major enterprise that lasted all day; when the bridge and road were finished, it would be an hour’s drive at most.

That wasn’t why he was happy though. He had heard that the Australians were well-paid so he’d picked out five of his best girls and taken them down in his truck to the Australian work camp. He guessed, after a week of hard work, they would be ready for a party. He’d been right, the girls had worked hard all evening and all the stories were true. The Australians were indeed paid well and seemed to have no idea of the exchange rate, something the girls all knew to four decimal places.

They’d earned more money in an evening than they normally would in a month and, even after they’d given half to Hernandez, they still had enough to see their families lived well. And, Hernandez thought, half was fair. He was the one who looked after them protected them when a customer got rough or tried to refuse to pay for their services. He was the one who thought up things like taking the girls to the Australians and spent his evening driving them over and then back to their homes. Half was fair.

“Jesus save us!” For a moment Hernandez had thought there was a dog at the side of the road, half-seen in his headlights, then he realized it was a person, crawling by the roadside. He swerved the truck to a halt and ran back to see what was happening. His Best Girl, the most senior of the women who worked for him and the one who represented their interests and dealt with their problems, had been riding in the cab with him. She had seen the person as well and was at his heels. The other four women were in the back of the truck, it took them a little longer to get down.

It was an old lady, crawling along the roadside, leaving a trickle of blood in the dust behind her. Hernandez knelt beside her, she seemed hardly aware of his presence at first, then whimpered slightly. And tried to turn away from them as if to hide.

“It’s all right mother. We’re here to help you. We’ll look after you now.” Hernandez turned to his Best Girl. “Do you know who she is?”

The girl shook her head. She had her arms around the old lady and lifted her slightly. The movement exposed the savage knife wound across the woman’s stomach and the bruising to her ribs. Whoever she was, she’d taken her dress off and wadded the material into the knife slash. It had slowed the blood loss and allowed her to get this far but she didn’t have much longer. Hernandez didn’t make a decision, in his eyes there was none to be made.

“You four, lift her gently get her into the back of the truck. Do what you can for her. We’ll take her to the hospital in Rosario. You hold on, mother, you’ll be in the hospital soon.”

Saint Iago Hospital, Rosario

“She is a very lucky lady Senor Hernandez. If you and

your who.......girls........hadn’t come along, she would have died.

Another few minutes at most. The knife wound in her stomach is deep but she was lucky there also, it did not penetrate the stomach wall. And the kicking did not fracture her ribs, at her age fractured bones would have been as dangerous as the knife.”

The doctor was furious at whoever had done this to an old woman and was trying hard to keep his voice impersonal and matter-of-fact. He wasn’t managing it very well.

“Who is she Doctor?”

The town priest, Father Faulcon, answered. He’d come the moment he had heard one of his flock had been hurt and was in critical condition.

“She is Graciella Ortega, Mister Hernandez. We have sent somebody to tell her family, they live in the south of the town. They will be here soon. But what can they do?” The Priest’s distress was obvious. Hernandez looked confused.

“What the Father means is that the lady has very serious injuries that will require much care and attention. She has lost much blood that we will have to replace by transfusion. Her wound is deep and will require careful treatment if it is to heal properly. Also, it is certainly badly infected and will require some expensive medication. The family are not poor but this amount of treatment is far beyond their resources. And without it, well, its not good.”

Hernandez looked at the doctor and thought it through. Ah well, perhaps his successful evening had been part of a greater plan, and anyway, there was always next week. He dug into his pocket for his share of the money his girls had earned that evening and gave it to the Doctor. “Will that cover the treatment necessary?”

The Doctor took the money and raised his eyebrows. It wouldn’t but it was a very substantial part of it. Across the room Hernandez’s girls had been trying to make themselves inconspicuous. It was a hard job, their heavy makeup and alluring clothes had made their profession obvious and they’d been the subject of quite a few hostile looks. Hernandez’s Best Girl had spoken to them quietly and they’d been digging in their bags.

Now she came over with another roll of money, smaller than Hernandez’s gift, the girls had to live after all, but enough to make up the difference. “Father, can you make up a story about this money. I do not think the family will accept it from people like us, even for their mother.”

Father Faulcon mentally agreed. The family would throw the money down the drain rather than accept help from the town pimp and five of his whores. But, Graciella needed the medical treatment the money would buy and the offer was sincere no matter who it came from. There was also a parable about a good Samaritan to keep in mind.

“Mister Hernandez, I believe the Knights of Columbus have established a fund to help provide treatment for those who have been the victims of vicious crimes like this. Or, they have, just this moment established such a fund, and I intend to see that they will support it generously. Mister Hernandez, ladies, the Ortega family will not know what you did tonight but remember God knows and God does not forget such things.”

Magasay Palace, Manila, Philippines

“The question is, just how closely is Abu Sayaaf linked to the Caliphate? Is it linked at all? Or is it a rival?” Prime Minister Joe Frye leaned back in his seat. With increasing numbers of Australian troops arriving in Mindanao, he needed to understand exactly what he was committing his troops to. And for how long.

“Prime Minister, the answer to all your questions is ‘Perhaps’.” Frye grimaced and The Ambassador smiled sympathetically. “That isn’t very helpful I know so let me explain further. Abu Sayaaf is just the local branch of a larger organization, Jamyaat lslamiyah. This is a fundamentalist organization that shares much in common with the Caliphate. Both look back to the days, centuries ago, when Islam dominated the area and its warriors swept all before them. The Caliphate seeks to revive the great days of an Islamic empire based on Baghdad, Jamyaat Islamiyah also seeks to revive those days but the state they wish to resuscitate is the Empire based on Malacca. That one was destroyed by Dutch traders and the troops of the Siamese Empire.

“So Prime Minister, in the short term, both the Caliphate and Jamyaat Islamiyah have the same aim and the same enemies. Their aim is to rebuild the ancient power they once held and to attack those who stand in their way. Even in the medium term, their aims, their methods and their objectives are the same. But in the long term, they are opposed. The Caliphate sees its Fundamentalist Islamic State being primarily a Middle Eastern one, owing its final allegiance to Baghdad, Jamyaat Islamiyah sees its state as a South Eastern Asian one, owing its final allegiance to Djakarta.

“There is one fundamental difference between the Caliphate and Jamyaat Islamiyah. The Caliphate is rich, it has oil revenues that bankroll its every move. Jamyaat Islamiyah does not. It is poor, it has few resources of its own and even the ones it can access are erratic and difficult to manage. Because, in the short and medium term, the Caliphate and Jamyaat Islamiyah share so much, the Caliphate is financing their operations. That won’t last, in the end the two groups will come into conflict, exactly when depends on how successful they both are. The more their success, the sooner war between them will occur.

“For that reason, Jamyaat Islamiyah has to establish its own financial independence. Without access to resources or to legal trading, they have resorted to criminal actions. They are behind the outbreak of piracy that has taken place in these waters, they are behind kidnapping and robberies here and in Malaya, they are behind bank fraud back home and in Singapore. In Mindanao itself we are seeing the start of a widespread and deeply rooted extortion racket, preying on families who have members working or living abroad. These criminal enterprises are Jamyaat Islamiyah’s future. Without them, they have no long term prospects.”

Sir Martyn Sharpe leaned forward. His left arm was aching unbearably and he had cramp in his back again. It as time to retire, more than time. If he could just see this crisis out, he could do so. Sadly, he thought, he’d said that about the previous crisis and the one before that. “Madam Ambassador” the formality felt strange talking to somebody who had become a firm friend over the years but he didn’t feel comfortable with any other form of address.

“If I understand you correctly, what we are treating as a single conflict is, in reality, two linked but quite distinct wars. The conflict we face along our north west frontier is ideologically and religiously linked to that we face in South East Asia but, defeating one of these threats will not implicitly mean the defeat of the other. We have to address both if we are to achieve long-term success.”

“That is perfectly correct Sir Martyn. We cannot afford to ignore or neglect either situation. The recent takeover of Egypt by the Caliphate has focused attention on their part of this conflict but we cannot allow it to absorb all our attention. If I may make a medical analogy, we have a patient suffering from appendicitis and cancer. We must treat the appendicitis now or the patient will die, but if we ignore the cancer the effort spent of treating the appendicitis will be wasted.

“It is my recommendation that we give priority to securing and containing the situation along the north west frontier. That is largely a military matter, we can push and push hard there. We have superiority in technology if not numbers and that runs for us. Here in the Philippines and at sea, we strike at the criminal enterprises of Jamyaat Islamiyah and cut them off from their source of non-Caliphate funding. Prime Minister Frye, I urge the Australian troops now arriving in Mindanao to treat the Jamyaat Islamiyah terrorists as gangs of criminal bandits and hunt them down accordingly.

“We have made a bad mistake in Mindanao and one for which I am responsible. We have treated the conflict down there as an insurgency and applied our counter-insurgency strategies to it. We failed to see they were inappropriate to what was happening and continued with those inappropriate strategies too long. We sought to win over those who could not be won over and attempted to conciliate the irreconcilable.

“Instead, we should hunt down and kill the bandits. Muslim commandments dictate that an observant Muslim must support other Muslims who are in conflict with unbelievers, even if the Muslim is in the wrong. That means we cannot separate the local population from the terrorists; their religious requirements make such policies futile. We have to eliminate the terrorist groups so that the requirement to support them is no longer of any consequence. The religious demand is to support fellow-Muslims. This can have a variety of meanings, ranging from joining in their efforts to simply not aiding their enemies. The more effectively we can eliminate the terrorist groups, the more likely it is that we can persuade people to adopt the least hostile of the possible interpretations. Of course, representing them as bandits and criminals who prey on everybody regardless of religion will not be a bad thing.

Joe Frye nodded. “So I can tell my commanders to let the troops off the leash then. Permanent hunting season, no bag limit. They’ll like that. The boys in the jungle down there have seen some pretty bad things and they’re aching for a chance to do something about it.”

The Ambassador gave a feral grin. “Indeed so. Our troops will hold the Christian towns and villages and teach them to defend themselves. Yours can start chasing the bad guys. And, Sir Martyn, we must all help you push hard against the terrorists operating across your borders.”

The feral grin grew more savage. “We’ve been pushed far enough. Its time for a Crusade.”

CHAPTER FIVE: MELEE

Molar Fishing Vessel “Karma “. South China Sea

The Karma appeared no different from hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Motor Fishing Vessels, the MFVs that plied the rich fishing ground of the South China Sea. The reefs and atolls were a fertile breeding area for enough different types of fish to keep an astounding large number of people alive and the most discerning gourmets satisfied.

Karma had a black hull, a large white eye painted each side so the ship could sec her way and a green superstructure aft. The bows reared high, the seas might be rich but they could also be treacherous. To make money fishing meant getting the catch home and that meant weathering storms. In the old days, Karma would have been a sailing ship and her hull design still had that legacy but she was a modern ship powered by a diesel. Karma was indeed almost identical to the MFVs, only she wasn’t one of them. She and her crew were pirates.

It had started over a year before, when Karma was still a relatively honest fisherman. It had been a bad cruise, the fish hadn’t been running and her hold was empty. Her captain had seen another fishing boat, on her way home, heavy in the water with a rich catch. Nobody could remember how they’d decided to do it but they’d boarded the other ship, thrown the crew over the side and watched them drown. Then they’d trans-shipped the cargo and opened the sea-cocks on their victim. She’d gone down quickly, just another casualty of the sea. They’d got a good price for the cargo as well, and it was a lot less work to take another ship’s cargo than catch their own. Soon, the Karma \s crew had almost forgotten how to fish.

Then, they’d been contacted by somebody who represented somebody else who then represented somebody else even further away. It was suggested that a mutually beneficial arrangement could be made. It suited somebody back along the chain to support the piracy and that support could make the career of a pirate much more profitable. They’d talked and the deal had been struck. The others gave the Karma guns to fight with and ammunition and a cheap navigation radar to spot their prey. In exchange, the Karma gave half her take to the people. Sometimes, they kept their victim afloat when the others wanted a ship and for that extra risk the rewards were generous. But, more than money, the Karma ‘s crew was now fighting for Islam as well and if they died, they would get the rewards of a holy warrior.

The radar had been showing a contact for some hours, probably not a fishing boat, its course and behavior was wrong. Very small though, perhaps a small craft in transit with a cargo between coastal villages. There was another possibility, one that made Captain Ismail lick his lips. It could be a pleasure yacht loaded with luxury goods. Even if they killed the occupants and sank the ship, the pickings would be good. There was another, thing that made the small contact an even more enticing prey, if it was a pleasure yacht, there could be women on board.

There she was. Small and white, almost certainly a yacht. He focused his binoculars on the craft. Prominent bridge forward, open area on top. Raked goalpost mast with a small radar on top at the rear of the bridge, still well forward. Chrome railings at the bow, catching and reflecting the sun. Long open area aft of the bridge with high sides and what appeared to be a seat aft and another set of chrome rails. There was a very faint trace of smoke, bluish, from that area. It was probably a barbecue and the occupants of the yacht were cooking a meal.

A luxury sports fishing vessel then, perhaps from Sydney or Melbourne or Darwin. And ripe for the plucking. Then a movement back on the bows caught his eye. Yes! There was a woman stretched out on the bows, sunbathing. That proved it, even without the blonde hair that had caught his eye. Asian women didn’t sunbathe, to have a suntan was the mark of the lower class, somebody who had to work in the hot sun instead of paying others to do it. They had to be Australian, ripe for the plucking indeed. Ismail signaled his helmsman to push the throttles on Karma forward, it was time to close in for the kill.

“Come on baby, come to momma.” Captain Vichai was watching the MFV pick up speed and close on him. His patrol craft had a lot better radar than she appeared to have and he’d been watching the MFV shadow them for some hours now. At first she’d looked like an honest MFV, but an honest MFV went with the fish, not with surface radar contacts. “Come on baby, Momma’s waiting.” Vichai had trained at the US Coast Guard Academy and he thought in American as often as Thai these days. Helped when working with Australians of course.

The MFV was less than a hundred meters away when she swung broadside to the pleasure craft. There was a crackle of rifle tire and a series of splashes in the water ahead of the yacht. The MFV wasn’t so very much bigger than the yacht, in fact the two craft were probably about the same length, but the rifle fire had been designed to give the intimidation power Karma lacked in size. Vichai glanced forward, up on the bows, Lillee had rolled off her couch and was now huddled behind the armor plate for protection. “GO” he yelled. On the gun-deck aft, his chief kicked a retaining latch and the sides of the yacht flew open. Flew was the right word, they were spring-loaded and it would take four strong men to return them to the “conceal” position.

What they revealed was a pirate’s worst nightmare, a 35 millimeter BOER. Made by Bharat Ordnance under license from the Swiss Oerlikon company. It was a single mount, self-contained and powered by a diesel generator. The yacht, or to use her proper name PCQ-83, had been specially reinforced to carry the gun and now she justified the investment. In theory, the BOER hurled 900 rounds a minute, in reality her 112 round magazines limited that to a much lower sustained figure.

It didn’t matter because the effect of the seven-second burst on Karma was catastrophic. The magazine was loaded with alternating rounds, one high explosive, the next armor-piercing incendiary and they tore the ship’s heart out. The gunner had started on the engine room, the armor-piercing shells ripping into the machinery and shattering the cylinder block of the big diesel. The explosive shells tore apart the fuel feed system spraying raw diesel into the air. Diesel doesn’t burn easily, but sprayed in a fine mist into the air and then lashed with incendiary ammunition, it catches fire well enough. Within a second the engine room was an inferno.

The deadly burst marched forward along Karma’s waterline, ripping it open in a frenzy of explosion, fire and fragmentation. The deafening roar of the BOER cannon stunned everybody but the crew of PCQ-83 had this down to well-honed routine. Up on the bows, Lillee, her blonde wig now discarded on the deck was kneeling behind the armor plate while aiming an RPG at the blazing pirate ship. The rocket seemed silent as it streaked across the sea surface, but its explosion ripped at the bow, tearing a huge hole in the wooden structure. Karma was already listing hard, her whole portside in flames and her shattered bow rearing at the sky like a dying shark. Her crew were trying to abandon ship but they had to do so in the face of fire from two machine guns mounted on PCQ-83’s bridge. They didn’t make it. The converging streams of bullets cut them down on the deck, tossing their bodies around like rag dolls.

By the time the ready-use magazine on the BOER was empty, it was all over. If anybody had been timing, it was less than ten seconds from the time the pirate ship had opened fire. Now she was sinking fast and PCQ-83 closed in on the wreck, taking pictures of her death. After the crashing roar of the BOER, the silence was almost uncanny, the sailors could hear the water lapping at the hull of PCQ-83 and the crackling as Karma’s wooden hull burned. Then, Captain Vichai saw movement in the water. There was a survivor swimming in the oil-filled waste that was staining PCQ-83’s pristine white hull. “Hey Khun Lillee. We have a survivor, would you like to do the honors?” The girl waved and trotted aft, pulling a T-shirt over her swimsuit as she went.

In the water, Ismail saw the figure leaning over the side and throwing him a rope. He was still stunned by the suddenness and enormity of the disaster. One second he had been looking forward to an evening of looting and rape, then all hell had broken loose and he had been blown into the sea by a deafening, overwhelming blast of gunfire. His beautiful Karma was a blazing wreck, already slipping below the sea. He had just enough presence of mind to catch the rope and felt himself being pulled towards the patrol ship. A girl reached down, stretching out her hand to him. He reached out but, instead of pulling him on board, she slapped a handcuff around his wrist. The other end was attached to a 10-kilogram lump of pig-iron.

“Pirate. You think you are a holy warrior? Well, if a holy warrior is killed by a woman, he goes to hell for all eternity. Enjoy eternity, pirate.” The girl blew him a kiss then pushed the lump of iron over the side. As it dragged the pirate to the bottom of the sea, Captain Ismail wished he’d had the sense to listen to his mother. She’d always told him to stay away from infidel women.

Hindustan Aviation Gnat F.2, Vishnu-1, 10,000 feet over the North West Frontier, India

The Gnat was a pilot’s aeroplane. Unlike the monster American fighters that hurtled around the sky so wrapped in speed and electronics that the pilot might as well be driving a train. Unlike the Alliance Aviation Arrow that was no better. The Gnat was the minimum possible airframe that could be wrapped around a pilot, an engine, and two 30 millimeter cannon. It was so small that, standing beside it, Squadron Leader Kintha could hardly believe he would fit in it. But fit he could. Just. He didn’t even need steps to get in, he could swing a leg into the cockpit the same way he could swing over the door of his sports car.

For all its diminutive size, the Gnat was a formidable little aircraft. Its two fast-firing 30 mms, semi-copies of the German MG-213C designed by Mauser in Switzerland and license-built in India, gave it respectable air-to-air and air-to-surface firepower. Under its short, stubby wings, the Gnat had four hardpoints. Today, the outer ones carried fuel tanks, the inner ones a pack of six five-inch rockets on each side.

The Gnat had other advantages, not obvious ones, but important. It was rock-steady, making it a perfect gun- and rocket platform. It was agile and had a blinding roll rate, in a dogfight it could reverse its turns so fast that an enemy would be dazzled into bewilderment. In mock dogfights it had wiped the floor with the old F-80s and F-84s.

Above all it was cheap, easy to build and easy to maintain. Hindustan Aviation boasted that they could supply an entire wing of Gnats for the cost of one of the American’s fabulous F-108s. It was true, too, and a lot of countries had appreciated the fact. Hindustan Aviation had an order backlog for Gnats that stretched for years and the Indian Air Force were in two minds on that. It was good that the company was making so much money on their export orders because they subsidized the Indian’s own production. The bad news was that deliveries to export customers meant that the Indian Air Force was getting fewer Gnats than it would have liked.

Still, his wing had them now. Three squadrons, each with 16 Gnat F.2s. a section of four Gnat R.3s and another of the two-seat T.4 conversion trainers. It was about time too. The rules had been changed along the north west frontier and this flight was being made to announce the fact. Until now, the terrorists crossing the border had had sanctuaries in Afghanistan and Iran but no more. Under international law, the victims of cross-border raids had a right of hot pursuit and now, India was going to take advantage of it. The previous night, a patrol from Skinner’s Light Horse had detected a group of terrorists crossing the border. They’d set up an ambush, caught the terrorists and bloodied them badly. Now the terrorists were retreating for what they believed was their sanctuary. It wouldn’t be of course, not this time.

Early that morning, one of the Gnat R.3s had done a sweep along the border. Its cameras had picked up another ambush, one the Caliphate was laying for the SLH. They’d fire across the border and rip up the Indian unit, then retreat into the trackless wastes their side of the border. So they thought, anyway. Kintha looked down at the map marked with the enemy positions. They were just about there. This was going to take some timing.

“All Vishnu Elements. Time to go.” He pulled the Gnat’s nose up and did a perfect wingover, translating his forward motion into a 30 degree dive at 90 degrees to his original course. The Gnat was supersonic in a dive and its little airframe went through the sound barrier with hardly a shudder. Behind him, the remaining three Gnats of his section were following his move, turning their finger four formation into a diagonal line diving on the Caliphate position.

Discipline always had been a Caliphate problem; their troops were tribal levies and did more or less as they wished. This time, they fired on the Gnats with their rifles and machine guns. That made what the Gnats were about to do legal, although the consideration made very little difference. It also gave away the Caliphate positions and that made a very big difference.

Kintha adjusted his dive slightly and waited to the position grew to fill his sight. Then, a gentle squeeze on the firing switch and the rockets Hashed out from under his wings. He started to pull back, seeing as he did, the explosions roll across the target area. He was watching for the corkscrew stream of smoke that would mark one of the shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles coming his way but there was none. That was good, but those missiles had taken so much of the fun out of a day’s work. The days when fighter-bombers could go on a low-level rampage through the enemy defenses were going fast. As he climbed clear, Kintha saw the second section of Gnats dive on the target area, releasing napalm tanks.

“This is Pegasus-four-three hee-ah.” The voice on the radio had the upper-class English nasal drawl that Indian cavalry officers affected. It was said in the Triple Alliance that the Gods, in their wisdom, had decided Englishmen were necessary and since the English weren’t really English any more, Indians were taking their place. Pegasus four-three was the Skinners Light Horse unit they were supporting. “Thank you my faithful flying fiends. We’ll take it from here.”

“Pegasus four-three, this is Vishnu-one. We have two more sections of Gnats with rockets and napalm waiting up here and lots of 30-mike-mike. We can’t stay too long but we’re here if you need us.”

“Thank you Vishnu-one. Hot day’s work, what?”

HMAS Tobruk, entering Rosario Harbor, Surigao del Sur, Mindanao

“I see the locals have come out to welcome us.”

“I think they’re actually watching to see if we’ll run aground Number One. Bump a pebble on the way in and they’ll have a line on us and be claiming salvage you mark my words.”

The heavy lift ship nudged into the tiny harbor. It was a hard approach, the channel was deep but sloped sharply either side, there would be little warning if they strayed out of the proper line. And, to make matters worse there was a 90 degree bend in the channel and a river running in from one side. The pilot bringing them in seemed to have forgotten about it and Tobruk was heading for the other side of the channel with dismaying speed. It seemed as if Tobruk, her crew and the battalion combat team on board her were steaming at six knots to catastrophe. They were already passing the mouth of the river when the pilot suddenly extended his hand and Tobruk wheeled neatly into the final approach. The pilot took the turn off before the Navigating Officer had expected and ordered starboard wheel. Tobruk was perfectly lined up on the unloading ramp with ten degrees of starboard wheel on.

The Navigating Officer let out the breath he’d been holding. The Philippine pilot grinned at him “The river current really messes things up when the tide’s ebbing. Quite strong here.”

Tobruk nudged up to the dock and let down her bow ramp. The harbor was quite well equipped by local standards, there was a quay they could unload cargo onto by crane and a slipway for the heavy vehicles. First ashore were the artillery, a battery of six Nulla self-propelled guns, their long barrels waving as they crested the ramp and moved into the shore. Based on the Monash tank chassis, they had a modified 3.7 inch anti-aircraft gun as their prime armament. It wasn’t used as an AA weapon of course, instead it was been modified into a medium artillery piece. The Monash had been too small for a 155, a shortcoming that had turned out to be serendipitous. The 3.7 fired a small shell, one short on destructive power, but it fired the shell a long, long way. The American 155 had a range of 14,000 yards, the Russians were proud of their 130 that could reach out to 24,000. But the Nulla could reach a stupendous 32,000 yards, more with supercharges. It wasn’t just reach, the gun was accurate, even to such unthinkable range.

The battery positions were already prepared, pits dug, ammunition dumps in place, all the standard fittings. Rosario was a Christian town, one that had been carefully chosen as one of the starting points of the campaign. It would be a fine base for operations. The Nullas here could reach far inland, so the infantry patrols hunting the terrorists could call on fire support. As they drove deeper into the mountains and jungles of Mindanao, more firebases would be established, more Nullas would be moved up so that the whole province would be covered in an interlocking network of artillery fire. The Australian troops would drive out, their deep penetration patrols pushing forward to find, fix and destroy the terrorists.

“Mister Shane. A few words please.” “Sir?”

“Once the battalion has unloaded, I would like you to accompany me to meet the town authorities and take a trip to the hospital. There is an old lady there, a Graciella Ortega, we need to speak with. She may have information that can help us get started. Where’s my interpreter?”

“Here Mister Golconda Sir.” The young man almost tripped over his own feet in the hurry. The cause of the urgency was obvious, a police officer had come down to the unloading area. A very senior police officer and in the Philippines very senior police officers were not to be trifled with or kept waiting.

“Please tell this distinguished officer that I am Lieutenant Colonel Golconda, in charge of the Australian forces here. I am very pleased to meet him and look forward to working with him.”

The interpreter spoke in Tagalog and the officer smiled in a confused sort of way. Seconds stretched to minutes and it was obvious nobody understood anybody. Then, a man in a business suit emerged from the onlookers and joined the group. “Perhaps I can help sir? I am Mister Acaragua, manager of the Philippine National Bank branch here.”

“Thank you Mister Acaragua. I was just introducing myself but we seem to have a problem, my interpreter can’t make himself understood.”

The bank manager started speaking and suddenly everybody started laughing. The police officer seized Golconda’s hand and pumped it vigorously. Mister Acaragua wiped his eyes. “Colonel Golconda sir, your interpreter speaks English and Tagalog, indeed he speaks both very well. But this is Mindanao and here we speak Visayan not Tagalog. Until you speak our language, you will need an English-Visayan interpreter. I have a cousin who can help perhaps.”

Golconda looked at the group and chuckled. Trust the army to send the wrong interpreter. Well, it was a better start than the Burma Campaign had.

Forward Messdeck, USS Austin LPD-4, Eastern Mediterranean

Even at sea, training never ended. The younger seamen, the ones on their first deployment were green, knowing even less than they thought they did about the world they had just joined. It was the Chiefs who were giving their professional education its final polish. Of all the Chiefs, the Senior Chief was renowned as the best and most competent tutor of them all. Later in their careers, seamen discovered that their notebooks of his lectures were more detailed and complete, not to mention easier to read, than the official textbooks issued by the specialist departments.

Even officers attended his sessions, officially to supervise training, in reality to pick up insights into practical skills gained from a lifetime in the Navy and also to enjoy the anecdotes that summoned up the spirit of a battleship Navy that had died in the 1940s. It was those anecdotes that gave the new seamen a glimpse into their future and the information they needed to make a success of their lives. It was information not written down anywhere, but vital nonetheless. The correct facial expression to wear while waiting for an officer to make a difficult decision, the appropriate words of condolence for a shipmate who had lost a relative or been passed over for promotion and the deadly dangers that lay in wait for those who mixed the malt and the grape. The Senior Chief gave freely of his own experience, gained bitterly by trial and error.

“When you see a light at sea, the first thing you do is take a bearing on it. Don’t worry if its Shiloh on a collision course or a drunken seagull. Get that bearing before you do anything else. Then you take action, inform the officer of the deck, whatever is appropriate. You there, the dopey looking one. Yes, you, not the one you hope is behind you. What do you do when you spot a light?”

“Err, take a bearing Senior Chief?”

“Right. Now for the different types of light. Navigational lights can be red, white or green. No other colors are allowed. If you see a ship showing yellow, purple or blue lights it’s probably the Staten Island Ferry or some demented DEMOCRAT. Now, look at these slides, they show a whole series of examples of lights. As we run through them we can see that they are quite logical. You, over there, they are logical aren’t they?”

“Yes Senior Chief.”

“So you see a 150 foot vessel aground on a reef at night having just been streaming minesweeping parvanes to port and acting as plane guard for Big E with a DEMOCRAT as Captain. What will she be showing?”

“Two black balls. Senior Chief.”

“You bet, two black balls, indicating a ship in distress, would be a good decision for a ship suffering the desperate misfortune of having a DEMOCRAT as her Captain. But there would hardly be much point in hoisting them at night would there? Especially since we’ve spent the last half hour talking about using navigation lights at night. So, double around the helicopter deck

repeating slowly and reverently ‘I will only have two black balls when I am out of control in daytime’ until I tell you to stop.

“Now, where were we. You hoist black balls in daytime when your ship is out of control, for example, the steering gear breaks down or the Navigating Officer gets rabies.”

“How about when you are refueling at sea, Senior Chief?”

“Good point, a very good example. The ship would not be under control and would be attached to the oiler by hose or line so, yes, hoisting black balls would be appropriate. Also when we’ve got our docking bay open, and are launching our landing craft, then we’re really not responsible for our actions. We should hoist them then as well. Now, back to lights at night.”

Helicopter Deck, USS Austin LPD-4, Eastern Mediterranean

Captain Pickering saw the lonely figure doubling around the helicopter deck. As the man passed the Captain, he saluted, “Sir, I will only have two black balls when I am out of control in daytime” and carried on his solitary tour. Captain Pickering turned to his Exec.

“I wonder what he did to annoy our Senior Chief?” he said pensively. The Senior Chief was giving one of the training lessons and this sailor had probably made an idiot of himself. Pickering shook his head, he knew now what he hadn’t when he’d been an Ensign, that he had an irreplaceable chance to learn. It was the Senior Chief who’d taught him how to run the accounts of the Officer’s Mess at a profit without being court-martialed for fraud and he was very sure that lesson wasn’t written down anywhere

“I thought he was a Marine at first, Sir, they’re usually the ones doubling around this deck. They certainly train hard sir.”

“Yes Exec.” Pickering’s voice was doubtful. He was worried about the Marines, oh not the ones on this amphibious group, they were as fine a force as a man could wish for. His worries went deeper, about the whole amphibious force itself. Perhaps it was time to talk. “Our Marines train as hard as they can and they’re as good as they get. What worries me is that for all the training and for all the quality, the whole doctrine we use for amphibious warfare is untested and unused. It’s all theory, all put together from the book. We’ve never tested it out under fire.

“You know the history as well as I do. We formed the Marines and the Fleet Amphibious Force for a landing in Europe in the event The Big One failed. As it all worked out, it didn’t and we never made those landings. Damn it, the only assault landings we ever made were the ones in the Azores and the Portuguese had agreed to be attacked and ordered their garrison to surrender without firing a shot before we ever put the first man ashore. If their position in Iberia hadn’t been so precarious, they’d have been in on our side before that. We bought the Azores from Portugal for Heaven’s sake.

“We’ve got all this doctrine, all this equipment, all these men and ships, and we really don’t know if any of it works. All we’ve done is a few in-and-out rescue missions, a few groups of citizens rescued from assorted riots, insurrections and various other examples of civilian nausea. The SEALS have done more actual operations than our Marines and they operate on the squad level. One day, we’re going to have to go into a hot beach in force and we have no real idea whether what we will do is going to work or not. That day might be a lot sooner than we think.”

“Trouble Sir?”

“You heard about the Caliphate taking over in Egypt and points south. The refugees are all over the sea around here, trying to get clear. A couple of Caliphate gunboats tried to take out an Italian corvette helping them and SAC blew them out of the water. Or so the story goes. Nobody in their right mind threatens SAC so the Caliphate’s going to try something else to get even. And we happen to be the closest American units to their coast.”

The Ruling Council Conference Room, Jerusalem, The Caliphate.

Once, many years before, when the most junior of cadets, Model had learned to go to sleep with his eyes open and sitting erect. He wasn’t quite asleep now, but he had tuned out most of what was going on around him. He’d finished the transportation of his people to Gaza, and he’d found himself in the middle of a major Caliphate base.

Gaza Harbor was the base for a whole fleet of the modem FAC-Ms, there were 18 already based there and more due to arrive. There were a pair of anti-ship missile bases with a battalion each of the long-range supersonic missiles that were arriving from Chipan. There were three anti-aircraft missile bases as well, and the missiles there were also new. So new, nobody quite understood how they worked yet. They had Chipanese experts manning them and those experts, living manuals Model called them, were training Model’s troops. And right in the middle of the complex was Model’s community. His troops, their families, everybody. There was better news. The Einsatzgruppen, sorry, the Guardians of the Faith, were elsewhere, working in Egypt to “cleanse” the country. That was what had made Model turn off.

In the middle of a major expansion with the deadly danger of facing the Americans looming, what was the Caliphate leadership discussing? Geostrategic imperatives? Operational requirements? Tactical lessons? Future concepts? Plans for consolidation or expansion? No. They’d spent two hours complimenting themselves on blowing up the Sphinx. As if blowing up a piece of rock a few thousand years old was any great achievement. Then they’d discussed more plans to blow up the tombs along the Valley of Kings. And then they’d talked about how to blow up the great Pyramids. Model wasn’t even sure it was possible to blow them up, he honestly doubted if even the American Hellburners could do the job. Well, perhaps, if one was put inside.

That didn’t make any difference to the Council of course. They’d discussed the destruction with expressions of almost orgiastic delight, with the same sort of glee that Model had seen on the faces of his men when setting off for a brothel. There was a moral there, something a psychiatrist would be able to explain. Was the sexual repression that dominated the Caliphate the root cause of their insatiable urge for destruction? Good question.

Model stirred and turned his ears on. The discussion had shifted to the recent events in the Mediterranean. There were long, gloating reports of the numbers of refugees who had been intercepted at sea and killed. That was mad too, why not just let them go? They weren’t wanted in the Caliphate and looking after them would drain the economic resources of whichever country took them in. But no, the Caliphate wanted them dead. As usual, the discussion made no sense at all. Each person would make grandiose claims, strike theatrical poses and issue bloodcurdling threats. Then one of them would quote something from the Koran he claimed supported his position and that settled it.

That wasn’t the problem, the trouble was that they’d done the impermissible. They’d had a confrontation with the Americans. Listening to the story, it seemed that a pair of their fast attack craft had engaged an Infidel ship that was helping refugees. They’d sunk it but a vast fleet of American aircraft had arrived and attacked the FACs. The Caliphate’s ships had shot the unbelievers down in their dozens of course but one of them had sunk an FAC. So revenge was needed and quickly.

Model had to work hard to stop himself laughing. If they really had shot down dozens of American aircraft, the Caliphate would be a radioactive wasteland by now. Just like Germany, Model reminded himself. The Americans did not make war upon their enemies, they destroyed them. And there was no word of any American ships being sunk, or anybody else’s for that matter. No, the whole story was fiction, except for the loss of the FAC. That was true enough. Once again, Model reminded himself, believe nothing these people say. They will say and do anything rather than admit defeat or failure.

Still, the Council was now discussing how to take its revenge. Dear God, Model thought, let them keep talking until they grew tired and something else took their attention. He wanted out of this meeting, wanted to get back to his people in Gaza and get back to trying to find a way out of the trap they were in. And, please God, don’t let these fools come up with a plan to attack the Americans again.

Gartokh, Eastern Tibet Border

It was time to move. By sheer chance, the Caliphate’s move in Egypt had focused the world’s attention on the Middle East and the “change of government” in Tibet had gone virtually unnoticed. To those that had seen the news, buried at the bottom of the page or at the end of the news bulletins, it was a good thing. Another religious government, another theocracy, had been cut off short, before it too could become a threat to its neighbors. The new government had said all the right things, made all the right actions. They’d declared an end to religious rule, driven the Dalai Lama out of the country and asked the rest of the world to help them build a new, democratic freedom-loving, society. Only the first people to respond had been the Imperial Empire of Japan and China and they’d slammed the door behind them.

Colonel Hu Kai-Lee was moving his division south east, to the border with India. He was up to strength, nominally at least although his trainees had barely reached a rudimentary level of capability. But, he had a division in numbers, probably a regiment in capability.

His first job was going to be to secure the communications lines and the population centers, such as they were. At least, there wasn’t going to be any resistance to worry about. The Tibetans weren’t like the Vietnamese who had created a virtual living hell for the Japanese in Indo-China. There, it was impossible for a unit of less than platoon size to move without vanishing into the jungle as if it had never been. There were stories circulating that whole companies and battalions had marched into the jungle, never to be seen again. No, the Tibetans weren’t the Vietnamese. More the pity.

The column of trucks stopped. The roads in Tibet were hardly world-class, this one was barely more than a stretch of cleared ground between two cliffs. They’d crossed the headwaters of the Indus a day earlier and the so-called roads had become consistently worse since then. Colonel Hu seriously considered ditching his motor transport, in terrain like this his soldiers could move faster on foot than in vehicles. The trouble was, that would leave them cut off from resupply. He lurched forward, the convoy had come to a halt again, another rockslide. Just a few boulders, he could see where thawing snow had split them away and tumbled them down.

At first he’d been suspicious of the falls but they were commonplace here. The Tibetans ignored them because their donkeys could thread around the obstruction when a truck couldn’t. The first few times he’d been stopped, he’d sent out a security guard and cover details while the engineers cleared the rocks. That had succeeded only in wasting time. He’d stopped doing that two days ago, and picked up progress markedly as a result.

One of Hu’s officers had already taken a work detail out to clear the rocks and had been waving his sword to urge his men on. Now Hu saw him suddenly collapse. Instinctively Hu started to count. Thousand-and-one thousand-and-two, thousand an.... The shot echoed around the cliffs, rolling like a clap of thunder. The shooter was much more than half a mile away, the shot had to be 900 meters at least. And now his officer lay dead, shot through the head. Now, they would have to go back to sending out patrols and securing an area before clearing rockfalls. An old poem Hu had read once, written by an Englishman he’d heard, echoed through his mind “ten thousand pounds of education shot down by a ten rupee jezail”. It looked like the Tibetans weren’t quite the ineffective sheep he’d assumed, they were going to fight after all. And that opened up all sorts of entrancing possibilities.

High in the cliffs, overlooking the road, the sniper team had already disengaged. They’d chosen their position well, there were secure, covered escape routes for both the sniper and his spotter, their gray robes blended in with the background perfectly. Even the sun was in the right place to make searching for them hard. It wasn’t surprising though, they’d been fighting skirmishes along the frontier every week for the last eighty years. Even since the Chipanese army had started moving, the Chitral Scouts had been exploring this terrain, meeting up with local tribal leaders and preparing to make the lives of the Chipanese units in Tibet very unpleasant. Now, that process was starting.

South of Lhasa, Tibet

The wreckage was strewn over a wide area, the Mitsubishi Ki-46 had been under partial control at least before the pilot had lost it and crashed. The Ki-46 was an old aircraft, it had once the finest recon aircraft in the world but that time was a quarter of a century in the past. Its piston engines marked it as being a survivor of a departed era, by all rights it should be in a museum.

Yet, oddly, for the role it now fulfilled, the Ki-46 was as good as anything else available and better than most. It flew high enough to get it above rifle and machine-gun fire, it was fast enough to get to an area quickly yet slow enough to look carefully and thoroughly for hostile forces. It was unarmed but it was large enough to carry the radio equipment necessary for calling in airstrikes. Over Indo-China, the Ki-46 had proved an invaluable aircraft looking for the guerrillas that plagued the forces trying to secure the area. They’d hoped it would do the same thing here in Tibet. Yet, they’d been in the country less than a week and already the first one was down.

The Kempeitai man in charge of investigating the shoot-down was speaking. “Definitely hostile. There is evidence of an explosion near the port engine. I think the pilot was trying to bring her in on the starboard engine and almost made it. It looks like the port wing failed at the explosion point and he spun in at the last second.”

“I didn’t think the Tibetans had anti-aircraft guns.”

“They don’t. But this wasn’t a gun. From the metal around the explosion site and its position near the exhaust, I am certain this was a missile, one of the small, shoulder-fired ones. A heat-seeker.’

“You mean this aircraft was shot down by our own forces?”

“Possibly. It could also be an American Redeye or a Triple Alliance Kris. They’re virtually the same missile, the Tripehounds build it under license. I doubt it though, I’ve seen aircraft downed by these missiles during tests and this one looks to me like it was one of ours. We will be interrogating all the antiaircraft crews in the area and accounting for their ammunition. We’re going to take the wreckage back home and do a proper examination there. Its amazing what you can find when you look hard enough. We will find fragments of the missile, with luck we may even get enough to identify it and, if it is ours, find which batch it came from. With luck.

The man from the Kempei-Tai rubbed his face, he and his teams had long days of work in front of them, determining what had brought this aircraft down and accounting for all the missiles held by loyal troops in the area. Even that wouldn’t answer all the questions though, he was uneasily aware that the Empire had sold very large numbers of these shoulder-fired missiles to the Caliphate and those religious maniacs had passed them on to who-knows-who. If it turned out this aircraft had been brought down by one of those missiles, there would be hell to pay.

Town Hall, Rosario, Surigao del Sur Province, Mindanao

lie was a repulsive, reptilian man, Lieutenant Colonel Golconda thought with distaste. Greasy hair, greasy skin and even as he sat in his chair, he seemed to be constantly fighting a strong underwater current. He’d asked for an appointment on a business matter and that’s what he had been given. That didn’t mean Golconda had to like it or him.

“Honored Colonel, I believe we have a matter of mutual interest. You have a battalion of your troops here, more, a battalion combat team in fact, with a battery of artillery and a company of your Monash tanks. That is more than a thousand soldiers. Those soldiers will be going on leave in this small town and, not to mince words honored Colonel, they will want to enjoy the company of ladies. But this is a town of good devout Catholics who honor the virtue of their women.

“If your men start to approach the ladies here, it will cause much offense and bad feeling, there will be fighting, perhaps some of your men will be hurt, perhaps some of the men here. If there is much trouble it may even cause outraged menfolk to consider helping the bandits. That would be a very sad thing. Even if your men do not offend in this way, if they try to find their own amusements, they may fall into bad company, perhaps women who will give them foul diseases or who will rob and even kill them. Even worse, the women may be working for the bandits and will extract information from your men that will damage your work here. So much room for problems.

“But, honored Colonel, I can offer a solution. Working for me are a number of ladies who enjoy the company of men. They are good girls, they take care of their health, they are honest and they do not steal. If they can talk your men into giving them gifts, well that is the way of the world yes? But they will not steal. You ask any of the young men in the town, the girls who work for Angel Hernandez are clean and honest. I do not suggest we have a formal agreement between us, but if your NCOs make sure the men in your command only go to the cafes where my girls work, I will guarantee those men will not be harmed or cheated. And if your doctors help my girls look after their health by giving them regular checks and if your military police keep an eye on the cafes so that those who have had a little too much to drink are quietly and discreetly assisted back to their barracks unharmed, well, this benefits us both yes?”

The damnable thing was, the repulsive man was right. Facilities for soldiers on evening passes were always a problem and this was as good a solution as any. If this man could be trusted, it would be a good solution indeed. And, as he’d pointed out, fraternization between the soldiers and local women was going to happen anyway. Better it should be controlled.

Like it or not, Rosario was going to be a garrison town now and the problems of garrison towns were as old as soldiering itself. Disease would hit his ready-for-duty strength and, sooner or later, he would start to lose men, stabbed in back alleys or poisoned. The arrangement being oh-so-tactfully suggested was indeed a good one. Golconda nodded almost imperceptibly to his senior sergeant-major who returned the gesture. The pimp would be met on the way out and the arrangements made. But the poisonous character was talking again. He’d caught the exchange of nods and interpreted them correctly.

“I am very pleased that we are able to establish friendly relations, honored Colonel. To have unwanted advances made to respectable women always causes trouble. Take the girl who works at the PNB in the square, Miss Narisa. She is a very attractive lady, very well educated, she had a degree in accountancy from Santa Theresa College. She handles all the foreign exchange dealings of the PNB, the money sent in from our foreign workers in India and Australia, the money sent back from our ladies who have married foreigners. Miss Narisa does all the paperwork for those transfers and helps the families get their money. Every time money arrives, Miss Narisa knows of it.

“A fine catch for a husband you might think. But she is a devout Muslim girl whose faith has deepened much in the last year or so and she will see nobody outside her own faith.” Hernandez sighed deeply “Such a pretty girl, but she spends all her time off work with the most pious of her fellow Muslims. It would cause much trouble if your men spoke to her.”

Good heavens, Golconda thought, He didn’t come here to discuss his business, he came here to discuss mine. And the bit of information he has just given me is a piece of the puzzle that helps everything else drop into place. Other pieces dropped into place as well. If this place became bandit country, Hernandez had realized it wouldn’t just ruin his business, he and his girls would die ugly. That meant the unspoken agreement he offered was indeed important to them both, especially the doubly unspoken part. His girls would pass back any information they picked up in the course of “business”. They might also pass back identities of any of his men who spoke too much about things they shouldn’t speak at all.

Golconda mentally apologized to the man, he was still a disgusting pimp but Golconda had allowed that to blind him to the very real value of the services he offered. He appreciated the ambiguity of the man’s last remark, he’d left it open as to exactly who would be caused much trouble if his men spoke to the girl in question. Then an anvil dropped. There was a much better way of handling that situation, one that could pay enormous dividends.

“Mister Hernandez, I would like to thank you for coming here and giving me your insight into local customs. Before you leave, would you join me in a drink? To celebrate the new friendship of our peoples?”

Market Street, Rosario, Surigao del Sur Province, Mindanao

Dahlia Tuntoya fingered her rosary and said a small prayer to herself. They would be coming soon and the thought terrified her. She’d agreed to the plan to avenge the injury done to her cousin Graciella who even now lay in hospital in grave pain from her wounds but that didn’t mean the she wasn’t terrified of the risk she was running. She was on her own, her house was quiet, her husband was away in Bacolod, her children, all but the youngest were away also, working or in college. She and her husband were proud of the fact that they’d managed to put every one of their children through school, even though they’d had to sell some of their land to do it. After all, the only better investment than land was an education.

Her eldest son was working in Australia, an engineer, he was gaining the practical experience he needed to match his school work. Then, as promised by the big Australian Colonel, a letter had arrived. Her son had completed a job far under budget and ahead of schedule so the company had promoted him and given him a big, big bonus. A draft check was enclosed with the letter and Dahlia had taken it to Miss Narisa to be cashed. When the conversion had been done, Miss Narisa had given her no less than a 100,000 pesos, enough to buy back the land they’d sold. A fortune indeed. Or, looked at another way, bait.

The doorbell rang. Dahlia kissed her rosary again, said another quiet prayer and opened the door. As she slipped the latch, the men outside hurled the door open into her face.

Across the road, the watchers grimaced as the three men forced their way into the Tuntoya house. They heard a gasping scream, cut sharply off and then nothing. Shane looked at the specialist who was monitoring the listening equipment in the house. He was white with anger and the skin had tightened over his cheekbones until they seemed ready to cut through the skin. The rage was unmistakable even through the whisper.

“They’re working the old girl over. Didn’t even give her a

chance, just knocked her down and started in on her........ They

want the money, all of it. She’s crying in there, begging them not to hurt her anymore.”

“Take it easy, we knew this would happen and so did she. I don’t like this any more than you do but you know very well what’s going on. Half the reason why they’re doing it is to find out if the situation is a set-up, they’re assuming that what they’re doing will make us come charging in to rescue her. We’ve got a fisting party ready, if it looks like they’re going to finish her off, we’ll go in, but otherwise we stay put.”

The specialist continued listening, promising himself that, one day, he would teach those thugs why men fear the dark. “OK, she’s given them the money, they’re counting it. One of them’s telling the old girl that she fell down the steps. If she goes to the police, they’ll come back and kill her. Describing how they’ll kill her. They’re leaving now, the bastards. That bitch in the bank, she fingers the victims. She picks out the middle-aged and older ladies, probably gets them talking and finds out when they’ll be alone in the house. Then she passes the information to her friends, lets them know when the women are on their own, unprotected. A man might come to the door with a gun and start shooting so they wait until their victims are by themselves. It’s times like this I start to think the Teas might be right. They keep telling us we can have a disarmed society or we can have a free society but we can’t have both.”

The three bandits left the Tuntoya house, slipping away into the darkness. What they didn’t see were the trackers following them. That wasn’t surprising, the trackers were Maoris from New Zealand. When the Maori scout team had arrived, the Australians had dismissed most of the stories about their tracking skills as legend or gross exaggeration. After seeing them work at first hand, the consensus was that they could follow a fart in a thunderstorm. That was still not doing them justice.

The watchers relaxed. After a while, a local boy came down the street, a pot in his hand. His mother, Dahlia’s sister, had borrowed the cooking pot from Dahlia earlier that day and now he had been sent to return it. He went to the house and saw the door was open. Cautiously, he went in - and the watchers didn’t need listening equipment to hear his scream. He ran out into the street, crying and screaming for help. A couple of neighbors ran out to see what was happening. The boy took a few minutes to make himself understood but then the adults went to the Tuntoya house. They also came out in a hurry. Wives were called to comfort the victim and a servant was sent off to get help from the hospital. An ambulance arrived and Dahlia Tuntoya was brought out on a stretcher.

As she was being loaded into the back of the vehicle, the doctor took his stethoscope from around his neck and folded it away in a pocket. Shane and the surveillance team relaxed a little, that was the agreed signal that Dahlia hadn’t been seriously injured. People were crowding around the ambulance, curious to see what had befallen their neighbor. In the noise and confusion of the street, another bandit slipped away. He’d stayed behind after the robbery, to see what happened and make sure nobody followed his fellow bandits. He’d never seen the trackers, and he never saw the pair that were following him.

Aviano Italian Air Force Base, Italy

It didn’t sound convincing, perhaps sincerity would help. Sophia had told him that, in show business, sincerity was everything, if you could fake that, whatever else you had to do was easy. So, try again with sincerity Major Kozlowski thought.

“Look guys, it really is a very simple system and it will save us all a lot of heartache.”

Eddie Korrina looked mutinous. “The old system worked fine. Why did the ying-yangs in Washington go and have to change everything? Means we’re going to have to learn the whole lot now. We’ve got better things to do.”

Kozlowski realized that the “better things” included Eddie’s Italian girlfriend. He didn’t have a chance to cut in, Xav Dravar was a lot more than just mutinous. “I heard that prize dead­head McNorman got the system changed because he screwed up in a Cabinet meeting and assumed a lot of things with different designations were really different bits of kit. Why should we have to bail him out?”

Time to seize the initiative Kozlowski thought. “Look GUYS. It’s a simple system. We’ll be using it, the Navy will be using it, the Army will as well. All the missiles are in a single number series. The prefix describes the type of missile it is. First letter is the launch platform. A for an aircraft, U for a submarine, M for the ground and R for a ship.”

“Why didn’t they make it S for a ship? Damned ying-yangs.”

“Don’t know. Its R. Second letter tells you where it goes. I is an air target, it stands for Intercept. G is a ground target. G for ground, told you it was logical. Then the third one tells us whether its guided or not, M for guided, R for unguided. Missile and Rocket. So, what used to be our GAR-8 has changed to Air-launched Intercept Missile number nine or A1M-9. Our GAR-9s are now the A1M-47. The GAR-12s are now AIM-7. Don’t ask me how they got in this order, the Falcon NORAD uses is the AIM-4. The air-to-surface version of the GAR-9 has become the AGM-76. Our nuclear Bullpups are now AGM-I2D, the ones with conventional warheads are AGM-12C. Clear?”

His crewmen nodded reluctantly. Kozlowski breathed a sigh of relief, that question about R for ships had been too close. What he knew, but wasn’t supposed to, was that S was indeed included in the system. S meant Space-launched. An SGM, a space-to-ground missile, and a SIM, a space-to-air missile, were already being developed. Time to get the guys thinking about something else. “The G mission code also covers our anti-radar missiles. So they are now the AGM-45. A Tiger Team will be coming out soon to change the displays in the aircraft over, it’ll only take an hour or so. So we’ve got to get used to the new names fast.

Missile Base Aldabaran, North of Gaza, Palestine Satrapy, The Caliphate

The trucks were huge, six wheels each side, two under the cab for steering, four spaced out under the large cylinder that seemed to be precariously perched on the back of the truck. The convoy had been offloaded from a Chipanese merchant ship at Al Zubayr in Iraq Province, then driven overland all the way to Gaza. There were six of the big cylinder trucks, followed by a whole line of other vehicles. Command trucks, radio trucks, engineer trucks, reload trucks, the infantry guard units. The commander from the Caliphate curled his lips at those, they were men from Model’s force. Janissaries, they were nothing more than Janissaries. The problem was they were orders of magnitude more capable than any other troops the Caliphate had.

The battery positions had already been dug out. Six positions for the cylinder trucks, the missile launchers. Each had a single missile in its launcher. They were new, and it was claimed, deadly. They were launched by a short catapult built into the cylinder and by rocket boosters. Then, the turbojet would take over and boost them to just over supersonic speed. They could reach out to over 300 kilometers and had their own radar homing system.

These missiles, the ones the Caliphate had bought, had 2,000 kilogram explosive warheads, a shaped charge behind the main fuel tank of the missile. When it hit its target the warhead would blast a hole deep into the enemy ship and fill that crater with blazing rocket fuel.

Long-range anti-ship missiles were hardly new but the problem was targeting. Over the horizon, there was no way to know precisely where an enemy ship formation was. The new missiles were partly a solution to that. Each missile had its own search radar but also sent a copy of the radar picture it could see back to the battery command post. The missiles would be launched in a fan, covering a wide arc. Once one missile spotted the enemy, the others could be sent course corrections that would take it to its target. There was another advantage to that plan, the missiles would approach their target over a wide arc, complicating the defenses job of shooting them all down.

The other part of the solution was a very special radar, a low frequency set that used a strange phenomena called ‘surface adhesion’. At certain frequencies, radar pulses would actually stick to the surface of the sea and travel far over the horizon. The information they got back wasn’t accurate but combined with the radars in the missiles, it gave an over-the-horizon capability nobody had achieved before.

Somewhere out there was an American task group. A few days earlier, they’d sunk a Caliphate missile craft with 19 men on board. Wiping out that task group would be a fair exchange. And if these six missiles couldn’t do it, there were six more in a battery further south that would help.

USS “Thomas Jefferson” CC-3, Command Flagship, US Mediterranean Fleet

She was the oddest-looking warship in the world, looking as if an aircraft carrier had raped a passenger liner late one night and the offspring had been so frightened that her hair was standing straight up from her scalp. She had the multiple decks and cabins of a passenger liner but the flat top deck and offset island of an aircraft carrier.

Only what looked like a flight deck had never known the beat of wings and there was no hangar inside the strange-looking hull. The deck was to provide optimum positioning for the big radio and radar antennas. Instead of a hangar there were conference rooms, combat information centers and a worldwide data display system, truly the most elaborate and secure communications equipment money could buy. Thomas Jefferson could download information from satellites, from SACs reconnaissance aircraft, from anywhere the command staff chose.

There were only three other ships like the Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, CC-1 was with the Atlantic Fleet, CC-2 Abraham Lincoln was in the Pacific and Ulysses Grant, CC-4, was in the Indian Ocean. Two more were being built to cover times when one or more of the others were in dock.

Thomas Jefferson had been built at enormous expense so that one man could have the finest command facilities in the world. Here, now, that man was Admiral Mahan, Commander of the Mediterranean Fleet.

“Admiral Sir, there is some sort of major activity going on along the coast of the Sinai peninsula and Palestine. We have a mass of radio traffic, reports of heavy movements, all consistent with a major build-up. There is a massive base area under construction around Gaza. We’re picking up surface-to-air and surface-to-surface missile sites being built, airfields are going up and air units moving in. There are extensive reports of troop movements into that area. In all, Sir, it appears that the Gaza Area is becoming the primary base for Caliphate forces in the eastern Mediterranean. “

Admiral Mahan looked out across the sea. One of Thomas Jefferson’s, escorts was visible, the USS Fargo. She was barely recognizable as the same ship he’d commanded so many year before, her guns had gone, replaced by surface-to-air missile launchers, Talos fore and aft, Tartar on each beam. Times had changed, technology was unrecognizable but somehow it all seemed the same. One thing was certain, he wasn’t going to make the same mistakes that had broken Admiral Spruance and Captain Madrick.

“Sinking that FAC stirred them up, but there’s much more to this than that. Put the fleet on ready alert, Tell Shiloh and Enterprise to put up Hawkeyes for airborne command and control and link us through to them. I want to see their radar picture. CAP is to be up at all times, a mix of Missileers and Super-Crusaders. That takes priority over everything. And make sure both carriers have strikes ready to go if needed.

“Then, get through to Aviano and patch me through to the commander of the 357th, I want Chuck Larry’s F-108 drivers fully briefed as well. Finally, get through to Washington. We need to do a recon run along that coast, find out just what is going on over there. A U-2 would be nice, or an RB-58.”

Mahan looked out to sea again. He had one thing that Spruance and Madrick hadn’t, the deadliest naval weapon ever devised. A lethal piece of equipment that Thomas Jefferson had been built to exploit. The Naval Tactical Data System, otherwise known as NTDS.

CHAPTER SIX: CASUALTIES

Office of the Secretary of Defense, Washington DC

It was an outrage. He was the Secretary of Defense and he was being treated like a doormat. Nobody was giving him the respect and deference he deserved. Nobody would listen to him or pay any attention to his ideas. Today’s cabinet meeting had been an example. The matter of reconnaissance flights along the coast of Palestine had arisen. There was some sort of military build-up in the area and Commander Sixth Fleet had demanded more information. McNorman despised the senior military officers, all they cared about was buying the latest, most expensive toys to play with. Even worse, they were set in the past, they ignored the prospects that only those who understood the new wave of the future could appreciate. The hidebound fool didn’t want information anyway, he was hoping for an incident so he could shoot his shiny guns at things.

The President had approved the U-2 and RB-58 flights without even consulting him. McNorman seethed at the memory. He’d tried to re-establish his authority by laying down course and coverage orders for the aircraft. After he’d finished, LB.I had just looked at him and said “Yes Robert” in the same tone of voice he’d have used to a small child who had claimed to have seen fairies in the back yard. And his input had been completely ignored.

The door opened and Ramsey Chalk walked in. Unannounced and without the courtesy of a knock. That was another thing that infuriated McNorman, The Attorney General had been assigned one of the legendary Executive Assistants supplied by the contractors yet McNorman hadn’t. Dean Rusk had asked for one and they’d recruited his assistant within a few hours, a young woman called Inanna. Rusk never stopped singing her praises. When he wanted something, it was organized for him, when he went somewhere, the itinerary was timed and arranged to perfection. Yet, he, Robert McNorman still had a secretary rather than an Executive Assistant. It was an insult, McNorman thought, a deliberate insult.

“Robert, I have been considering the implication of today’s decision to fly reconnaissance flights over the Palestine coast. It is my ruling as Attorney General that the planned flights constitute a breach of International Law and by carrying them out, the United States will be committing a war crime. Since it is your department that will be responsible for these illegal flights, you also will be committing a crime.’

McNorman stared at Chalk with disbelief. He knew that the man had developed a habit of going well beyond his departmental remit in his search to place the United States under the control of international legal systems and organizations but this was going too far. The President himself had cleared the flights and, anyway, everybody knew SAC flew where it wanted, when it wanted, and woe betide anybody who tried to interfere.

“Robert, it is my decision to establish a series of rulings that will mitigate the severity of our criminal activities. I call them Rules of Engagement.” SAC already had those, McNorman reflected, as a rule, if somebody engaged SAC, they ceased to exist shortly afterwards. “I have written these out as a series of instructions for your crews. Distribute them before the flights tomorrow.”

McNorman looked at the list “Restricting the flights to subsonic speeds?”

“Going to supersonic speeds causes a bang that damages private property on the ground. Therefore it is illegal. You will make sure these rules of engagement go out tonight.”

Chalk strode out of the office, leaving McNorman seething behind him. Then, the SecDef started to read the document outlining the ‘Rules of Engagement’. As he did so, a slow smile spread over his face. Quite unwittingly, the Attorney General had given him the precise tool he needed. The ‘Rules of Engagement’ were a godsend, a gift from providence. If they turned the mission into a disaster, Chalk would shoulder all the blame and suffer the penalties. But, the disaster would prove McNorman’s own point about the vulnerability of the bombers and the need to replace them with missiles. He’d get his way and somebody else would take the penalty.

But, if the ‘Rules of Engagement’ did not bring about a disaster, it would be proof that the high speed and high altitude performance of the next-generation bombers was unnecessary. He would have the justification he needed to cancel production of every one of them - and Ramsey Chalk would think that McNorman was his ally. No matter what the effect of the ‘Rules of Engagement’ proposal, he, McNorman would get what he wanted, the fundamental reconstruction of the entire US Department of Defense. At last, all those who stood in his way would have to admit that he had been right after all.

McNorman picked up the message with the ‘Rules of Engagement’ and read it again. It was truly the key he had been waiting for. It had to go out to Aviano straight away, before anybody could countermand it.

Aviano Italian Air Force Base, Italy

The four RB-58s were in a line on the taxiway, surrounded by their ground support equipment, waiting to go. Marisol was in the lead, she had the longest mission, up to Beirut and then down the coast to Gaza. After that she would follow the Sinai coast and then come back home. Tiger Lily would be following her, she was carrying an electronic intelligence pod under her belly. Her job would be to record the electronic signals from any systems that attempted to track Marisol. Behind them, Spider Woman and Queen Bee were waiting to follow up, they’d probe any unexpected areas of activity that emerged. It was a routine mission for the RB-58C, the only thing that wasn’t routine was that an Air Police pick-up truck was heading straight for them. It swerved to a halt in front of Marisol and Colonel Hazen jumped out, his face a mask of fury.

“Mike, the rest of you, you had better read this and read it now. It just came in. It’s a piece of trash called ‘Rules of Engagement’, it comes right from the top. From McNorman himself. I can’t believe it.”

Kozlowski took the message and went white. “Subsonic only? Altitude not to exceed 40,000 feet? Do not fire unless fired upon? Do not fire unless enemy weapons have actually been launched? Do not engage other nation’s fighter aircraft unless they fire upon us? Get visual identification of targets before firing? Don’t fire on ground targets that are within ten miles of civilian population areas regardless of circumstances? Are these maniacs trying to get us all killed?”

“Mike, these ‘Rules of Engagement’ are absurd. If you want to abort this mission while I get this confirmed, I’ll back you all the way. These orders make any penetration mission virtual suicide. According to McNorman’s covering orders, these are the legal determinations made by the Attorney General. I can’t believe the targeteers know about this. These orders will be reversed, I’m sure of it. If you want to refuse this mission, nobody will blame you. All of you, you want to scrub it?”

The four RB-58 crews looked at each other and shook their heads. SAC did not turn back. Kozlowski turned to Hazen “Sorry Allen, can’t do that. My old man would throw a fit. Anyway, the Navy needs the information we’ll be getting. We’ll take this one real careful and if the bad guys start shooting, then to hell with these, these ‘Rules of Engagement’, we’ll do what we always do.”

Hazen nodded, it was what he’d expected. He had a card to play though. “Mike, you carrying nuclear-armed AIM-47s and AGM-76s?’

“Of course.” The reply was irritable and impatient, Hazen couldn’t blame him.

“Well, under these ‘Rules of Engagement’ even carrying, let alone using, nuclear weapons is prohibited. So we’ll have to pull Marisol and Spider Lady from the flight line and reload them. We’ve got conventionally-tipped Bullpups for air-to-surface and we’ll borrow some conventionally-armed AIM-47s from the 357th for air-to-air. That’ll take at least an hour, buys some time to get this cancelled at least.”

Kozlowski nodded. “OK boys, mount up, we have a job to do.”

Hazen watched the crews board the bombers, then got back into his pickup truck. In addition to the hour needed to swap out loads, it would be a couple more before the aircraft were in a danger zone, the question now was whether he could get through to Washington, get these damned ‘Rules of Engagement’ countermanded and then get the word to the crews in time. Then, he had a brainwave. There was a direct link to the USS Thomas Jefferson the Mediterranean Fleet Flag, she had a direct link to Washington as well, lie could try and get a message through her also.

Anyway, it may not be all bad. Nobody in their right minds opened fire on a SAC aircraft and those who did got nuked. No if, buts or maybes. Everybody knew that and held their fire as a result. So even if these orders increased the vulnerability of the bombers, then the difference might not be critical. It all depended on how rational the enemy air defenses were and if they knew about these insane ‘Rules of Engagement’.

Outside Restaurant “Pizza-Dacha”, Zentral-Prospekt, Moscow, Russia

One thing that had always amazed Tony Evans was that Moscow could be baking hot in summer. He’d always had a picture of the city being perpetually wrapped in snow but today, the sun was beating down and people were taking the opportunity to enjoy it. They’d been walking the Prospekt window-shopping and were now waiting for his restaurant to open so they could have pizza. Evans had parked his Mustang by the building, he owned the Moscow and Petrograd dealerships for Mustangs now and they were selling well.

In fact, the Mustang was doing for Russia what the Model T Ford had done for America. It was cheap enough to sell widely, robust enough to be reliable, simple enough for people to maintain, sporty enough to appeal to youngsters and practical enough to appeal to their parents. When people bought cars, they wanted roads to drive them on, so the Mustang was slowly driving a road construction program in Russia.

“Tony, why is that man wearing a leather coat?” Klavdia’s voice was puzzled. Evans looked at his wife. She was wearing one of the boldly-floral print dresses that Russian women favored, a thin, summer-weight one. Evans was in shirt-sleeves as dictated by the weather. So were the passers-by. The militiaman, one of Moscow’s police, admiring the Mustang was in shirt-sleeves also. So why was that man wearing a long, heavy leather coat? The militiaman nodded. This deserved investigation.

“Hey You. Stop there. I wish to see your papers.” Russia was a free country now, by the standards of its past anyway, but people were still expected to carry state identification papers and show them on demand. But the militiaman’s shout set the man in the incongruous leather coat running, straight at a group of people gathered the other side of the Prospekt.

The militiaman cursed and there were a couple of light cracks as he drew his Makarov pistol on the runner. Evans cursed and went for the Ml911 he kept in the Mustang’s glove compartment. Then, there was a dull crash and he realized he needn’t have bothered. Klavdia might be wearing a light summer dress instead of Frontniki khaki but her rifle was never far away from her. This time, it had been on the back seat of the ‘Stang and she fired almost by reflex.

The man in the leather coat was stretched out in the middle of the Prospekt, his head distorted almost beyond recognition. Klavdia’s 7.62 x 54 hollow-point had done its usual number and stopped him dead. The traffic was gently steering around the body, slowing down to see what was happening. Russia, Evans reflected, was getting more like America every day.

The militiaman went over to the body very cautiously and looked. Then he waved Evans over. Hanging from the man’s jacket was a simple plunger switch, the type seen on lamps in every home. The man’s coat had folded back and they could see the vest underneath, loaded with sticks of explosive. Construction dynamite by the look of it. People were beginning to edge closer to look and the militiaman ordered them back sharply. Then, one of the onlookers recognized Klavdia and “its Kalugina” was whispered through the crowd. Being married to a national war-hero had its problems Evans thought.

“There is a telephone in the restaurant, militiaman. Please feel free to use it. The Federal Security Service will wish to investigate this. And enjoy your free slice.” It was a rule Evans had laid down for all his Pizza-Dacha restaurants. Any militiaman who came in wearing uniform was entitled to a free slice. It was a very low-cost way of ensuring that the militia would be on hand to deal with any trouble that arose. Yes, Russia was becoming more like America every day.

RB-5MC “Marisol”, over the Palestine coast, just south of Gaza.

They were on the last, and most important, leg of the flight now. They’d made their landfall just north of Beirut and run south from there. The first real information they’d picked up was around Yaffo, there were a lot of emitters that had tracked them but no hostile fire control radars had lit up. Still, Yaffo had been a lot busier than anybody had expected, Kozlowski had a hunch a second big base complex was going to be built there. Now they were running past the existing complex at Gaza. At 511 knots and 40,000 feet up, both Kozlowski and Marisol were uncomfortable, Kozlowski because the low speed and altitude put them at much greater risk, Marisol because her engines were optimized for the colder, thinner air higher up.

“More search radar emissions, Mike.” Xav Dravar was reporting from the Electronics Pit aft. “All are long-range search emissions, no target acquisition or fire control radars yet. There are a lot of search radars here though, including a couple we haven’t seen before. The Caffs have at least three new toys down there. I’m recording the signals for the brainiacs back home.”

“Mike, why in hell are we down here, we can do this job better from 60,000?”

“According to the ‘Rules of Engagement’ we are only allowed a single pass so we have to get as much information as possible in that pass. So the authors specified we fly low. Oh, by the way, we can’t change routes between missions, each recon flight had to follow the same path. Don’t say it, you can’t say anything I haven’t already thought. This whole situation is crazy.”

Marisol continued cruising south, soon she would make her turn and start to run along the Sinai coast before going home.

Missile Base Sirius, South of Gaza, Palestine Province, The Caliphate

Oberleutnant Hans Engstrom watched the aircraft approaching on his search radar scan. It had been tracked south ever since it had crossed The Caliphate coast in Lebanon Province. Now it was passing over Gaza. The initial identification had been an American recon aircraft but the flight path was all wrong. About 13,000 meters up and about 900 kilometers per hour. Too low and slow for one of the Americans. Or maybe not, it could be one of the old B-60s, the speed and altitude were about right for that. Just possibly a B-52. A few years ago it could have been a Navy A3D but they’d all gone now, they’d been replaced by the sleek Vigilantes. Perhaps it was time to have a look.

The battery was equipped with the latest version of the Chipanese-designed Hiryu surface-to-air missile. The missile itself was good enough but its guidance system was all too vulnerable to electronic countermeasures. The Chipanese had come up with a solution for that. Their Navy had always been advanced in its production and use of optical equipment, rangefinders, telescopes, binoculars. That background had been used to create an optical system that could track a target without using the fire control radar. The optics were coupled to television cameras so that the image they obtained was displayed on screen in the command van.

It was far from being a perfect system. It couldn’t be used at night, it couldn’t be used against very fast or high-flying targets and it wasn’t that accurate but this target was within its capabilities. Engstrom switched the system on, after a second or two it warmed up and an image appeared on the screen. Empty sky. The field of vision of the tracking head was very narrow and actually framing an aircraft in it first time was virtually impossible.

Nobody said life had to be easy. The optical tracking head was controlled by a stick, just like the control column on an aircraft. Engstrom panned around a bit then caught something and focused in on it. He’d been lucky, normally the optical head couldn’t scan fast enough to track one of the American aircraft but this one was moving slowly. Then he caught his breath. Delta wings, four engines. It was one of the American’s vaunted SAC RB-58s. Why in hell was it moving so slowly? He flipped another switch in the control console. Now the fire control radar was aligned with the optical tracking head, he had a radar fix even without turning the set on.

“Fire a missile. Shoot the Satan down.” The Mullah in the control center had the petulant expression of a sulking child. A very dangerous, sulking child. Engstrom thought as he looked at the display. It was a SAC bomber, from the people who had burned his country off the map. Engstrom’s family had come from Gutersloh, one of the cities the Americans had annihilated. There was nothing substantial left of Gutersloh or the people in it. The city itself was just ruins and a cobalt-blue circular lake. And the people? There were less than a dozen survivors of Gutersloh, none of them known to Engstrom. It wasn’t unusual of course, there were 200 other cities in Germany that looked exactly the same way. SAC had destroyed Germany so thoroughly, some people even tried to erase the name. The French never used it, they called Germany Nafoco. The Nameless Former Country. And it was SAC that was responsible.

“Wait, wait, they are still on the edge of our engagement zone, if we fire now they can evade us easily. If they carry on their present course, they’ll be in our no-escape zone very soon. So have patience.”

The Mullah stamped away, pacing the command post with his frustration. SAC’s bombers were an offense against divine will, they were the tools of Satan, they needed to be destroyed at every opportunity.

At the missile control console, Engstrom manipulated the control of his optical head very carefully. He had the system on maximum magnification now and the field of vision was very, very narrow. If he sneezed or twitched or breathed wrongly, he’d lose the picture and he wouldn’t be able to get it back. As it was, he had the silver bomber framed in the picture and the radar fire control system was slaved to it. Any second now, his finger went out to the switches that fired the missile. One armed the weapon, that had already been activated. It just needed one squeeze to fire.

RB-58C “Marisol”, over the Palestine coast, just south of Gaza.

“Still no target acquisition or fire control signatures Mike. A lot of general surveillance radars though. Two more lit up just a minute or so ago. There’s a whole scramble down in the port, our ESM system isn’t precise enough to split them apart. Probably the ships in the harbor, maybe even navigation radars for the harbor itself.”

“Any hostile air activity?”

“Negative Mike, we picked up a few airborne bogies far inland but they’re keeping well away from us.”

“Sensible people.”

“Yeah, didn’t think the Caffs had it.... RED, RED we have a missile launch. Surface-to-air, coming our way ... coming up on us fast. It’s definitely targeted on us”

“Xav jam the son-of-a-bitch’s guidance system. Ed, locate the guidance radar and take it out. Screw the ‘Rules of Engagement’.” Kozlowski slammed Marisol’s throttles forward and felt the familiar thump in his spine as the reheat cut in and the engines surged to full power. He pulled the nose back and swept the aircraft into a climbing turn. As Marisol swung at 90 degrees to the original course, he did an abrupt wingover, pulling the nose in and under so Marisol virtually reversed course in mid-air. At that instant, Dravar punched the release and a cloud of chaff spread from its launchers in the wings. The missile that had been on his forward port quarter was now port and aft and there was a spreading chaff cloud between Marisol and the inbound missile.

“Mike, I can’t find a tracking signal to jam. There’s nothing there. But that thing is coming for us, it followed our turn perfectly. I’m hitting flares, it may be coming in on infra-red.”

Missile Base Sirius, South of Gaza, Palestine Province, The Caliphate

The crew were good, Engstrom noted. They’d picked up the launch almost immediately and the violent turn and wingover had almost caused him to lose their picture. He’d just held it though and he’d seen the cloud of chaff spreading around the aircraft. The sunlight reflecting off it had almost - almost - made him lose the target again but he’d held her. Now the aircraft was surrounded by white smoke and brilliant orange-white lights. Decoy flares, they were assuming the missile had a heat-seeking backup system. Nearly right but near wasn’t good enough.

A few second to impact now. Engstrom flipped another switch on his console. This activated the fire control radar on the ground that illuminated the target for the radar guidance system in the missile. The electro-optical system wasn’t accurate enough for the final intercept but the target wouldn’t have time to jam its signals in the fraction of a second it would be on.

RB-58C “Marisol”, over the Palestine coast, just south of Gaza.

Speed was life. Kozlowski put Marisol’s nose down in an attempt to pick up as much forward speed as possible. He felt her punch through the sound barrier, if he could get her up to maximum and pick up enough altitude to get where the air was thin and she could run the way she was designed to, then they could duck this thing coming at them then take out the people who had launched it. And damn the ‘Rules of Engagement’.

“Radar, we have fire control radar tracking signal.

Jamming now...”

It was too late. The Hiryu missile had three warheads, spaced equally down the airframe of the missile. The design was intended to put up a wall of fragments through which the target had to fly. That assumed the missile exploded in front of the target. However, Marisol’s evasive action had put the missile behind her, now it exploded directly underneath and about 150 feet below her. The wall of fragments slashed along her belly like a buzz-saw.

The crew heard Marisol’s scream of agony as the displays in all three cockpits erupted into a sea of red warning signals. The screens in the Bear’s Den blacked out with a terrible finality, in the cockpit Kozlowski felt the controls freeze solid in his hands. Around him the sky was starting to rotate. He fought the frozen joystick trying to bring the aircraft back under control but there was no movement, none at all..

“Get out Mike, get out now. While you can.” Marisol’s voice was weak but insistent.

“We told you, we don’t bail on you. We’ll get out of this. There’s a divert airfield in Libya the Italians said we can use.”

“Too late, I’m all smashed up inside. Get out now, it’s all over.”

“I told you we won’t b..”

“Get out, GET OUT GET OUT.” At Marisol’s last scream, Kozlowski felt the ejection capsule fold around him and the rocket of the escape system throw him clear of the cockpit. Eddie or Xav must have banged all three of them out, he thought. The three ejection capsules were in a tight group, falling together, with luck that meant they wouldn’t have to waste time finding each other on the ground.

As the ejection screen fell away, Kozlowski saw Marisol. Her belly had been ripped open by the missile, the under-fuselage pod smashed and disintegrating. Both inboard engines were on fire, leaving two parallel streaks of black smoke across the sky. Between them a sheet of white, streaming from Marisol’s shattered fuselage filled the air. She was in a flat spin, dropping from the sky like a stone. Her last words had been right, if her crew had waited a second longer, the G-forces would have stopped them escaping.

Even as he watched Marisol started to break up. The port wing went first, fracturing at the inboard engine mount, the detached portion fluttering clear. Then the tail broke off just aft of the wing trailing edge, there was a known weak point there, where the fuselage had been extended from the original B-58A design. Suddenly, Marisol was simply falling out of the sky, tumbling end-over-end, shedding wreckage as she went. A split second before impact, she jerked her nose up. Then, her head still held high, she hit the desert and exploded.

White House Cabinet Office. Washington D.C.

Veteran Washington hands do not rely on press statements or contacts inside the Pentagon for advance notice of international crises. Instead, they cultivate the managers of fast food joints around the Pentagon and the White House for the first sign of international disaster is a sudden spate of delivery orders from those buildings. Now, in McDonalds, Dominos and a dozen others, the cooks were working overtime. Which wasn’t surprising, emergency cabinet meetings were rare and deadly serious.

“Security Advisor, can you brief us on what has happened.”

“Mister President, less than an hour ago, one of our RB-58Cs, Marisol crashed. Almost certainly she was shot down by forces belonging to the Caliphate. Information from Tiger Lily indicates Marisol was hit by a surface-to-air missile. There are a lot of things about the incident that we do not yet fully understand and we urgently need explanations.”

lnanna entered the room and gave a note to Secretary Rusk. He read it quickly. “I am sorry to interrupt Seer. Mister President, the Italian Government has just issued a statement that their radar tracking station in Libya saw the incident. Their statement says the lost aircraft was flying much lower and slower than usual and their initial assumption is that it was suffering severe technical problems. There is a classified note from Senor Mussolini attached Mister President, he says his government will act as independent witnesses to confirm whatever it is that we decide is the truth.”

“Nice of him. What does he want? More importantly what happened can wait. I want to know what happened to the crew. Are they alive? Have they been captured? What are we doing to get them out. Seer?”

“Mister President, it is our understanding that all three crew members ejected safely and are currently somewhere in the Sinai desert. The good news is that they are certainly quite close to the coast and we have one of our best SEAL teams on the scene. Standard practice is, they’ll go in, find the crew and bring them out. The crew have emergency beacons they can use. The SEALs are very, very good at this sort of work.”

“Mister President. As Attorney General it is my ruling that any such rescue effort will contravene the territorial integrity of a sovereign nation and, as such, will be an offense against international law. I have issued orders that forbid any such rescue attempt.”

Admiral Theodore crashed his fist down on the table. “I will not be a party to issuing any such order. The Navy will not let the Air Force down.”

“Chief of Naval Operations.” LBJs voice cracked out. “Three things. Firstly, I am the only person in this office who is allowed to crash his fist on the table.”

“Yes Mister President. My apologies Sir.”

“Accepted. Secondly,” LBJ crashed his fist on the table. “I will not be a party to any member of my government issuing such an order. The Navy will not let the Air Force down.” His tone and cadence matched Admiral Theodore’s perfectly. “Thirdly, if any such orders have been issued, get them countermanded immediately. I want a rescue effort mounted as early as possible and with whatever forces it takes to do the job is that clear?”

“Sir, Yes Sir.”

“Then Admiral, you are excused the rest of this meeting. Get that rescue authorized and organized. Ramsey, you and I have discussed your habit of exceeding your authority. I had thought I had made your position quite clear. Obviously I have failed. Your remit does not extend to giving orders to me or to the other members of my Government. What part of that do you fail to understand?”

“Mister President, it is my duty as the senior legal authority in the United States to interpret international law and to see that the United States complies with those interpretations. That is why I formulated rules of engagement and required the department of defense to comply with them.”

“What the hell are ‘Rules of Engagement?” LBJ glared around the room. The Seer shot a “what the hell are they?” glance at Lillith who returned a “beats me” gesture. McNorman was fumbling in a briefcase. He produced a paper.

“Perhaps I can explain Mister President. Last night, the Attorney General saw me and gave me these so-called “Rules of Engagement”. He told me that they were compulsory for all US forces operating abroad. I assumed, Sir, that he had your authority for these orders and, reluctantly, issued them.”

He passed the paper to LBJ who started to read it, stared sharply at Chalk, then read the rest. When he spoke his voice was quiet and measured.

“Mister Attorney General. In fifty years of public service I have never seen a document that was more crowded with infamous falsehoods and distortions. Falsehoods and distortions on a scale so vast in their implications that I can imagine no responsible gentleman on the face of this earth issuing them. Your resignation as Attorney-General and as a member of this government is accepted. Leave.”

“Mister President, I...”

LBJ put his forehead in his hand. “Go. Just Go.” Ramsey Chalk hesitated for a moment, causing Naamah to bump into him and push him slightly towards the door. He left, Naamah following closely behind him.

“Mister President.” LBJ looked up at McNorman wearily. “Although I cannot condone the Ramsey’s actions, I must say that they have demonstrated the truth of what I have been saying for many months now. The destruction of this RB-58 shows our force of manned bombers is obsolete and vulnerable. We should immediately initiate a major program for its replacement with land-based ballistic missiles.”

“Robert, it should be obvious to you that this disaster has only happened because the aircraft in question was forced to fly at speeds and altitudes that allowed the enemy to fire upon it. Had it been operating normally, we would not be having this meeting. What this demonstrates to me is that the need for our new fleet of very fast, very high-flying bombers is more urgent than we realized. Henry, please get Treasury to prepare a budget supplemental to accelerate production of both the B-70 and B-71 as much as is practical. Now Robert.”

“Yes Mister President?”

“I believe that the Bureau of Indian Affairs is urgently in need of your talents. You will take over as its head with immediate effect. Of course, if you prefer that we should stage an investigation into the extent of your involvement in this “Rules of Engagement” affair...”

McNorman shook his head and left. LBJ sighed and looked around the conference room. “Dean, Defense needs a capable and effective Secretary. One who can make the system work for our armed forces, not against them. I would like you to leave State and take over Defense. I realize I am asking a lot of you but the country needs your services there.”

Dean Rusk thought for a moment. “Mister President I would be honored. May I ask if I can take Inanna with me?”

“That’s a matter for the Contractors, she is employed by them not us.” The Seer nodded approval.

“Very well then. Dean, your first job is to get this mess straightened out.”

Dean Rusk and Inanna started leaving. As Inanna passed the Security Advisor he stopped her ‘Inanna, honey, State to Defense is a promotion, see me later about the appropriate salary increase.”

Office of the Attorney General Washington D.C.

Ramsey Chalk was throwing papers into his briefcase. Around him, Naamah was carefully packing his personal possessions in boxes for transport. “It’s an outrage, just who does he think he is?”

“I know Sir, it’s terrible what he has done. He had no right to dismiss you like that.” Naamah’s voice was oozing sympathy and affection.

“It is about time the people of this country understand they are answerable to the international community. The way America has trampled over the rights of the rest of the world is unconscionable.”

“That’s so true Sir, we only have to look at the nuclear bombing of Germany to see that.”

“Exactly. We deliberately slaughtered tens of millions of ordinary German civilians. That is a war crime of unimaginable proportions. Oh, I know they have always claimed that they were bombing military and industrial targets but I know they really were trying to kill as many Germans as possible. There’s no proof of that though, if there was I could create enough of a scandal to make this country see how criminal its behavior has been.”

“But there is proof, Sir, didn’t you know?” “What do you mean Naamah?”

“In the basement of the National Security Building are all the documents concerning the planning of The Big One. They show quite clearly that the real target of the bombing was the German civilian population. It’s all documented, how they planned the attack to kill as many Germans as possible. I worked on the papers when I was a research assistant. If you come with me Sir, I’ll take you to them.”

“Why would you want to help me?”

“Because I am your Executive Assistant and because I know what truly lies in your heart.” Naamah smiled gently “You might say it’s a talent of mine. Wait a moment Sir.”

She disappeared into a back room of the office complex for a few minutes and came back with a large thermos flask. “We’ll be working down there all night Sir, So I fixed coffee to keep us going. Now, shall we go?”

Ramsey Chalk and Naamah took the brief drive to the National Security Building and she let them in. Chalk felt the chill as he entered, partly from a deliberate temperature setting, partly from the huge statue of death that dominated the entry lobby. Chalk felt the statue staring at him as he entered, then got a weird feeling that it had made a respectful nod to Naamah as she passed. Pure imagination of course, just stress, anger and the effects of the strange architecture of the deserted lobby. Chalk looked at Naamah affectionately, the woman was risking a lot to help him, obviously she was a fellow spirit, somebody who shared his beliefs and aims.

“Sir?” Naamah had gone to the lifts on the left hand side of the lobby and called one in. It was open and waiting. Ramsey

Chalk stepped in and felt the red-painted doors close behind him as Naamah took him into the basement of the National Security Building.

Bridge, USS Austin LPD-4, Eastern Mediterranean

“Gentlemen, we have a serious situation. I am afraid I have to confirm what you have almost certainly heard via the ship’s bush telegraph. Just over an hour ago, an RB-58 belonging to Strategic Aerospace Command was shot down by Caliphate forces. As far as we are aware, the crew ejected safely and are somewhere in the Sinai desert, our best estimate is no more than ten or twelve miles inland.”

“Right then.” Commander Thomas stood up. “I’ll roust out the boys and we’ll be on our way. It’s getting near dusk, we’ll insert just after sundown, that’s when people’s eyes will still be adjusted to daylight and they won’t be seeing right. Captain, please flood the docking bay and we’ll be out of your hair.”

“Commander Thomas, there are a couple of problems.” Captain Pickering’s mask slipped and the anger showed up from under. “I have received orders from the Attorney General not to undertake any rescue operations or to conduct any hostile actions against forces deployed by the Caliphate.”

There was an explosion around the bridge. “Gentlemen, please. Firstly I doubt the legality of this order. I do not believe that the Attorney General has the authority to issue such an order. In the event, I am advising you as Captain of this vessel that this order is null and void. I have conferred with the commander of this amphibious warfare group and the Captains of the other ships and we are of one mind. Commander Thomas, I am ordering you to prepare and execute a rescue plan as per your standing operational procedures. If there is any fall-out from that order, it will begin and end with the Admiral and the Captains.

“That brings me to the second point. We are close in to a major Caliphate base area, Gaza. We don’t know what they have there, that’s what the aircraft SAC lost was trying to find out. One thing we do know, they have something new and nasty in stock. We haven’t lost a bomber in combat since The Big One almost twenty years ago. SAC has never claimed its bombers are invulnerable, merely that trying to shoot one down is incredibly foolish. The Caliphate has been incredibly foolish and the problem is, we don’t know how they did it. Whatever is in there brought down a B-58 so it’s dangerous. As another result, we don’t know what SAC have in mind for retaliation, we may have to pull you out fast, regardless of whether you’ve found the missing crew.”

“Captain Pickering Sir, standing orders are, when aircrew down are in enemy territory, we have to go in and get them. They say nothing about us having to come out.”

“Understood Commander, but you will be very close to a major enemy base. The opposition is likely to be very severe. I do not criticize the quality of your SEALS but you are twelve men, you could be facing a regiment or a division or more.”

“So we’ll have them outnumbered. “ Thomas grinned. “Captain, if we get into a shooting-match, we’ve failed anyway. Do this right, the Caffs will never even know we were there.”

“Don’t underestimate the opposition Commander. It’s not just the Caffs we have to worry about. Model’s Janissaries are in Gaza and they are the toughest survivors of a very tough bunch. They know we’ll extract by sea, so they’ll try to block the beaches. Getting in might not be a problem but getting out will be.”

“Not if we hold the beach first Sir.” Lieutenant Colonel Soren cut in. “We’ve got a battalion landing team here, infantry, tanks, artillery. After Jeffs taken his hooligans in, we’ll seize a beach-head and hold it. That way, he’ll have a secure base to fall back on. And the more of us who take part in this, the less likely we are to all get court-martialed.”

A ripple of laughter spread around the bridge. “Good, Colonel, make it so. You are in command of the landing force so make up a plan and I’ll forward it to the Admiral. We haven’t got much time so we’re going to have to work this one out this on the run as it were. Damn, I wish we had some air support we could rely on. Until we find out what brought down that RB-58, we can’t put helicopters too close to Gaza. Wait one.”

A signalman came onto the bridge from the radio room. Captain Pickering read the flimsy and relaxed slightly. Sanity was returning to the world.

“People, change in situation. This is a message from the CNO, Admiral Theodore, via Commander Mediterranean Fleet, Admiral Mahan. By Presidential directive the orders forbidding a rescue attempt are countermanded and canceled. For our information, Ramsey Chalk and Robert McNorman have both been relieved of their offices. President Johnson has ordered that the missing aircrew be rescued by whatever means necessary. Admiral Mahan has delegated command of the rescue operation to this amphibious group. For our information, the Shiloh and Enterprise battlegroups are merging and closing on our position to cover us. The Bull Run and Seven Pines battlegroups are entering the Mediterranean at flank speed to reinforce us. When they arrive, there will be ten carriers in the Eastern Mediterranean. That leaves the Atlantic bare but that’s no great worry.

“Gentlemen. We’re cleared to do what we were going to do anyway. A final note from Admiral Mahan. He reminds us that if we fail to rescue these men, there are postings enough in Alaska for us all. Good luck, and God Speed.”

Magasay Palace, Manila, Philippines

“Damn, I knew it was going to happen. It’s been hanging over us for five years now.”

Sir Eric Haohoa looked at the Ambassador. She’d let her guard down and her voice had contained a mixture of annoyance, amusement and relief.

“How so Ma’am?”

“The Americans. We owe them much for the help they gave us during the start of the Burma Campaign. Now they are calling in the debt. One of their bombers has been shot down.”

“Good God! Which country has ceased to exist?”

“They are all still with us. For the moment anyway. The Americans are concerned, they are not sure how their bomber was brought down. They know it was a missile of some sort, almost certainly one supplied by Chipan, but they do not know the details of how it made the intercept. So they want us to find out for them.”

“How can we do that ma’am? Our intelligence on Chipan is mostly political, very good political, but political none the less.

Our sources on military systems are much less comprehensive. Most of our well-placed informants were killed during the Showa Restoration Coup. As for technical capability, we are at least a decade behind the Americans if not more. We still import all our most advanced military technology from them. How do they expect us to get information that they cannot even guess at? I think their demand is unreasonable.”

“Perhaps. Let us put that to one side for a moment. Now let us proceed to a quite unrelated matter. We have received another communication from Admiral Soriva in Taiwan. He is quite desperate to find a source of supply for military equipment, especially aircraft and armored vehicles. He is keen to buy Gnats from India plus Monash II tanks and Nulla long-range artillery from Australia. Previously we have ignored such requests.”

A light bulb went on in Sir Eric’s head. “The Americans want us to agree to the sale of military equipment provided Admiral Soriva gives us the technical information they need! He’ll never agree to that, he may be in a state of rebellion against the Tokyo government but he’s a loyal Japanese officer, he won’t hand over classified information. Anyway, how can Taiwan afford equipment on the scale he’s speaking about?”

“I wouldn’t be certain of Admiral Soriva’s final loyalties. He is a loyal Japanese officer certainly, but he sees the Tokyo Government as the disloyal betrayers. Remember also it is common knowledge in the Chipanese armed forces that the Government has been supplying shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to the Caliphate who immediately gave them to the Tibetans to use against Chipanese forces in Tibet.”

“Urn, Ma’am, we supplied those missiles to Tibet, from stocks we’ve captured in Indo-China, Mindanao, Burma and the Northwest Frontier.”

“Details Sir Eric, don’t be so concerned with mere details. I think Admiral Soriva will be persuadable on this issue. As for money, don’t underestimate Taiwan. They have a significant industrial structure already and the potential to build more. Chipanese industrial weakness has always been a matter of mismanagement rather than actual lack of strength. Managed properly, Taiwan could become quite a prosperous little country, if it gets the chance. A worthy member of the Triple Alliance in fact. But, that is for the future. In the short term, the Americans are prepared to make short-term financing available for the deal on very generous terms. And, of course, we are in a position to charge premium prices for our products.”

“So, in effect, we are the cut-out in a deal between America and Taiwan?”

“Precisely Sir Eric. The Americans have a C-144 supersonic transport waiting for us at Clark Field. By the way, Sir Eric, please try to persuade Sir Martyn to remain here and, preferably, take a rest. I am deeply concerned for his health. Every time we meet, he appears to be suffering from a more serious illness than before.

Parliament Building Taipei, Taiwan

If he listened very carefully, he could hear the thunder of artillery. The Imperial forces on the other side of the Formosa Strait were pounding Quemoy and Matsu islands again. They’d been doing so daily, ever since the administration here on Taiwan had established itself as a rival government for the Imperial Empire of Japan and China. Not a serious rival of course, in fact Taiwan’s pretensions to representing the Empire as a whole were little short of a joke. Yet, it was a very important joke, for as long as Taiwan claimed to be the rightful rulers of the Empire, they were stating that the Empire was a unified whole. Thus, their actions could be - and were being - presented as a dispute between members of the ruling class, not a rebellion against that class. It was a power-play game, not a revolution.

And, like most games, this one had rules. Taiwan didn’t claim independence, Tokyo didn’t erase Taiwan from the face of the earth. Tokyo restricted its attacks to offshore islands, Taiwan didn’t attack the mainland. Taiwan kept its contacts with the outside world muted, Tokyo made only formal objections to essential trade. There had been no meetings, no conferences, no written agreements. Everything had been done through third- and fourth parties, by inference and suggestions.

When Taiwan had mentioned it wished to buy replacement military equipment, Tokyo had objected ferociously but buried within the protests was a subtle distinction. Certain items of equipment were the subject of bile-filled warnings of grim consequences if the plans went through but others received only a pro-forma rebuke. The message was obvious, Japan would accept some Taiwanese defense purchases provided they were limited in nature and did not provide a strategic capability. Tokyo had threatened nuclear attack if Taiwan purchased Australian aircraft such as the TSR-2 and the Arrow but studiously not mentioned the purchase of Indian Gnats. They’d fulminated against the purchase of the heavy Indian Centurion tanks but only objected to the purchase of the lighter Australian Monash II.

At first, the Taiwanese approaches for trade links had been ignored, but now they had a response. A message from the Triple Alliance indicating that they were prepared to sell Taiwan military equipment after all. A hundred Gnats, including twenty for immediate delivery from Indian Air Force stocks, two hundred Monash II tanks and forty Nulla self-propelled guns. Soriva grinned at that one, Tokyo had seen the caliber, less that 100 millimeters and only made formal noises. They hadn’t looked at the range or accuracy figures. The game had rules but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be bent a little.

Even better, the Triple Alliance message contained the offer of a financing package on extraordinarily generous terms. Long payment periods, low interest rates, no cash down payment. That was both good and curious. Good because Taiwan had a financial shortfall that would take years to correct. Curious because the prices the Triple Alliance was charging for the equipment were outrageous. They were asking for five times the amount the Triple Alliance air forces were paying for their Gnats. Generous financial aid and usurious asking prices were an odd combination.

Still, even at these inflated prices, the tiny Gnats were worth the cost. They were so small they could be flown off roads and hidden in buildings when on the ground. The history books told how the German bomber group that had sunk the Shiloh had survived the carrier-based aircraft sweeps because its commander had spread the aircraft across the countryside, hiding them in barns and flying them from roads. Of course, the same history also told how the group had been wiped out when it flew its attack. One of the things Taiwan was planning was a new road network. Those roads could have straight sections for flying and hangars built into the bridges for the Gnats. Soriva had heard the Americans were doing the same thing with their LeMay Interstate Highway system. He paused for a second, contemplating Japan’s reaction to Taiwan purchasing the new American bomber, the Valkyrie, shuddered and returned to the subject troubling him.

The kicker for the deal was in the tail. The message said that the Triple Alliance was interested in purchasing anti-aircraft missiles and requested details of the fire control systems on the land-based systems in Imperial use. Soriva snorted. That was transparent. Face-saving at most. News that one of the American’s vaunted bombers had been shot down had ricocheted around the world and everybody was waiting for the rumble of explosions that would signal another country joining the select group of ex-Nations. The Americans were being clever though, they would rescue the crew of the shot-down aircraft first so they could find out what had happened and they wanted this data so they could work out what had happened. Then they would take their revenge.

Soriva paced his office. He was, for all his current position, a loyal Japanese officer. The idea of giving away what amounted to state secrets appalled him. But, on the other hand, had not the Tokyo authorities made an even worse betrayal? Giving away a few technical manuals was bad but they were supplying missiles to people who were using them to shoot down Japanese airmen. If Tokyo found out - and they would find out - about the leak of the manuals, they would be furious but Taiwan was already on their to-do list. Taiwan didn’t need more enemies but giving away the data wouldn’t make any, only confirm the position of an existing foe. What Taiwan did need was equipment and friends.

It was an agonizing decision to have to make. Soriva sat at his desk. The top draw was open a little and he could see his American .45 automatic, the gun that had saved his life and the lives of most of his family. In the decision he was making, the sight of that gun counted for no greater weight than that of a feather yet when scales are evenly balanced, a feather on one pan or the other will cause a decisive tilt. Soriva decided to give the Americans the information they wanted.

The decision made, his mind started to range. The delegation was arriving in an American C-144, the transport version of their Hustler bomber. Another sign of who was really behind this sudden offer. He guessed the moment the Triple Alliance got the information they needed, that aircraft would be off to Washington, on full reheat all the way. Or at least as far as its fuel tanks would take it. Hawaii perhaps?

Now logically, he should make the Triple Alliance negotiators sweat blood for the data but was that really such a good idea? If he gave them the information they asked, as earnest money so to speak, the Americans would get it faster and speed was of the essence. That would allow The Triple Alliance to score markers with the Americans and they would owe Taiwan for those markers.

If he looked at the short term, he could screw down the prices the Triple Alliance was demanding. He looked at the list again. The Australians wanted how much for a Monash II? He shuddered at the number. But the medium and long term suggested that giving the information would be the better deal. The revered Admiral Yamamoto had been a great poker player, Soriva thought. Time to follow his example and gamble. It never hurt to be an American friend, one only had to look at Russia to see that.

Soriva sighed and wrote out an order for his technical staff to prepare a package of documentation on the fire control system for the Hiryu long-range anti-aircraft missile, the Katana medium-range and the Tanto short-range missiles. He thought for less than an instant and specifically added instructions to include the operational details of the new electro-optical adjunct to the guidance system for each.

That matter concluded. Soriva moved to more traditional affairs. Kawachi had been refloated and towed into Kaohsiung harbor. She was repairable although the work would take years. Nevertheless it would be done. One day, she would be the flagship of the Taiwan fleet, and one day, somehow, somewhen, she would regain her place in the Imperial Navy. One day.

Iwate International Airport, Taipei, Taiwan

International was a joke. The airport was a single runway, a single building, a shambles of wrecked and semi-scrapped aircraft and a handful of decrepit but workable ones. The airport building was shabby, the paint peeling of its walls, the door not quite properly on its hinges. Amongst the decaying disorder, the sleek Superstream looked horrendously uncomfortable, rather like a gently-raised heiress who suddenly found herself living in a skid row hostel, which, if anybody had asked the aircraft, was exactly how she did feel.

The delegation from The Triple Alliance emerged from the cramped interior of the executive jet to the cavalcade of cars that awaited them. As they came down, a group of sailors started unloading packages of books from a van and taking them to the pod under the C-144 that served as its cargo bay. The Ambassador grimaced and gave Sir Eric a US hundred dollar bill. She’d gambled Soriva would make them sweat for the information and it wasn’t often she lost a bet.

Once again she reminded herself not to underestimate the man, his inoffensive air as a genial if slightly naive civil servant was belied by the fact that he had been the head of the Indian intelligence services for more than a decade and nobody held that position without being both skilled and ruthless. About the only mistake she knew he had made was his assumption that she’d had something to do with the death of John F Kennedy. She hadn’t, his death really had been an accident, but Sir Eric had never quite believed that. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t considered the possibility but she had decided that the potential risks far outweighed the possible gains.

As the delegation drove off to start the tortuous negotiations, the C-144 turned around to take off again with its vital load of manuals and documentation. On one point, Admiral Soriva had been wrong. The aircraft would not fly on full reheat all the way back to Washington It couldn’t, it didn’t have the fuel. Instead it was heading back to Clark Field in the Philippines. There, the YB-70 was waiting for the cargo and it would make the flight back to Washington at full speed. The YB-70 could do something that the C-144 could only dream about, it could cruise at speeds well over Mach 3. It was a strange fact that the YB-70 consumed less fuel per mile at Mach 3 plus than it did at subsonic speeds. To all intents and purposes, the YB-70s cruising speed was its maximum speed. That meant it cruised almost a thousand miles per hour faster than the C-144. The result of that differential was that the flight from Clark Field to Washington would take less than six hours.

CHAPTER SEVEN: RECOVERY

Sinai Desert, south of Gaza.

“She’s gone Mike, we can’t change that. We’ve got to get out of here. That fire is a ‘Come get us’ sign for everybody in a hundred miles.”

Eddie Korrina was right and Kozlowski knew it. The column of smoke over Marisol’s wreckage was rising hundreds of feet into the air. The crew had made a beautiful eject, landing a couple of miles away from the crash site yet within visual distance of each other. Dravar and Korrina had walked over to where Kozlowski was sitting on the sand, watching the smoke rising over Marisol’s grave. He was staring at the site, hardly aware of anything else. Then, he shook himself and stood up.

“I know, I know. It’s just, you know. I just feel there should have been something we could have done, they shouldn’t have taken us down like that. Not a bunch of Caffs.”

“Mike, there wasn’t anything we could do. We were way too low and way too slow and the Caffs hit us with something we’d never met before. There was nothing we could have done.”

Kozlowski shook his head, he felt as if a part of his soul had been ripped out. “I know that as well. We’ve got to get back and tell the brainiacs what happened so they can work out why it happened. By the way I don’t know which one of you banged us all out but it was a good call. The rate we were spinning, another split second and the G-force would have been too high for an eject.”

The other two crewmen looked at each other, confused. “Mike, we thought you ejected us. I was still trying to identify the signal on that damned missile when the seat fired.”

Kozlowski frowned, Marisol’s last scream was still echoing in his ears. “Guys, it’s getting close to sunset. We’ll head west until midnight then swing to the coast. The Caffs know the book as well as we do, they’ll be expecting us to go straight for the sea. They’ll have patrols out to intercept us. There are a lot of bad people out there who’d just love to get their hands on any SAC crew let alone one from an RB-58 outfit. So we’ll head west then north. Standard beacon drill. Two minutes transmission every twenty minutes but we’ll hold off for a couple of hours. Then I’ll transmit on the hour, Eddie, twenty minutes past, Xav, 40 minutes past. The SEALs will be looking for us, if they aren’t ashore by now they soon will be. Let’s go guys.”

The crew set off, walking towards the setting sun and being careful to avoid getting skylined as they crossed the dune lines. Being silhouetted against the setting sun might look dramatic but it was terminally unsmart. Ahead, the red disk was just touching the horizon, behind them, Marisol’s funeral pyre still stretched into the darkening sky.

Sinai Coast, south of Gaza.

Most traffic accidents happen at dusk. When the sun sets, the weakening light isn’t strong enough to activate one set of receptors in the eye but is too strong for the other. Evolution designed the human eye to work in daylight or at night and, given a chance, it works fairly well in both. But, dusk is the gap between and there, the eye doesn’t work very well at all. It flickers between its two optimum settings, detail is washed out, depth perception is messed up. The eye makes shapes out of random patterns and makes random patterns out of shapes. It sees things that aren’t there and fails to notice the things that are. Dusk was a very good time for the SEALs to do their thing.

In any case, invisibility was a state of mind more than anything else. Not being noticed was a skill, not a matter of technology. Science helped, the SEAL’S uniforms were the result of years of research into how the eye worked. Here, for the desert where everything was curved, the pattern was a strange mixture of gentle curves that subtly, but irresistibly, lead the eye across them, away to something else. The muted colors blended and eddied in ways that were downright disturbing when taken out of their proper context. If the SEALs had been going into a built-up area, they would have used different uniforms, one’s with straight lines and jagged contrasts. Against the angles and corners of man-made structures blasted into rubble, the soft billowing curves would have been inappropriate and unhelpful.

Their equipment had the same elusive quality. Popular films of the SEALs had them covered with special equipment and deadly weaponry, their faces covered with masks or balaclavas. Here, where it mattered, such pretensions weren’t even considered. They would catch an observer’s eye, jar his attention and that would be fatal. Everything about the SEALs was nondescript and impalpable, designed to do everything but draw attention.

But, it was still the state of mind that was important. The SEALs looked at the rocks, the sand, the straggling plants and thought of them with affection and respect. They mentally apologized for disturbing them and, as they moved, they tried to tried to inconvenience them as little as possible. They thought kindly of the things that surrounded them, admired them and thought how much they wanted to be just like them. Treating their surrounding with affection and respect, they became part of them. On some intangible, miasmic level they ceased to be there at all. They became voids, an extension of their surroundings. They could walk into crowded rooms and people would look at them without seeing them because they had blended into the background so effectively.

In the bars around Norfolk and the other SEAL bases, it was a standing joke that the big men with tattoos and loud voices who occupied the bar, boasting of their exploits as SEALs were wannabee frauds. The real SEALs were the quiet, mundane men sitting in a corner - only you couldn’t quite see them.

And so it was on the beach that was part of the Sinai coast. As the sun slipped below the horizon, Commander Jeff Thomas’s SEAL Team Two slipped ashore. Even if anybody had been watching, they wouldn’t have seen anything. Or, to be more precise, they wouldn’t have been aware they’d seen anything.

Sinai Coast, North of “Marisol” crash site.

The Marines weren’t SEALs. Their skills were entirely different. When their lead element hit the beach, there was no doubt about it. They were in amphibious tractors, LVTs, ungainly vehicles that were neither landing craft nor armored personnel carriers but somewhere in between. They swam through the surf then crawled up the beach taking the lead platoon towards the rock fields inland. More swam ashore and headed to the flanks. By the time all the LVTs were ashore, the Marine Company had established a perimeter that protected the landing beach against direct fire. Behind them came a pair of landing craft, LCTs, that unloaded a platoon of five M60 tanks, a Marine company headquarters, the heavy weapons platoon and a detachment from the battalion support company. By the time the last element came ashore, more than 250 men were on the beach.

The landing site had been carefully chosen. It was straight, smooth, and small enough to be protected by a company-sized perimeter. It was surrounded by a ridge of jumbled rock that provided cover for the Marines on that perimeter yet allowed the mortars on the beach to give them supporting fire. In fact, it was such a perfect beach for a night landing that the planners had guessed it had been used by smugglers back to Biblical days. There was supporting evidence for that, the one thing the planners hadn’t liked, an old track that lead through the rocks to the north.

That was why the tanks were on the beach, along with two 106 millimeter recoilless rifles. Together with the company’s 60 millimeter mortars and a pair of 81s detached from the battalion heavy weapons company, the firepower covering the beach was enough to hold it solid - or so the planners hoped. The Marine infantry were already nesting down into firing positions on the outer edge of the rock-pile, sheltered by the boulders but with a clear field of fire outwards. Now, it was just a question of waiting.

AC-133A “Buffy”, Eastern Mediterranean.

When asked, Buffy’s crew always explained that the name stood for Big Ugly Fat Fellow. Which was almost right, except the last F didn’t stand for Fellow. The first production C-133 Cargomasters had been built without an unloading ramp in the rear, that feature had been introduced with the B-model. Only 24 C-l33As had been built, and two of them had crashed. The rest of them had been retired with only a few dozen flying hours on them and sent to the boneyard.

One night, all 22 had mysteriously vanished. Their new owners were Special Operations Command, a tri-service organization that existed to provide the various special forces groups with the equipment they needed. They’d modified the C-133s in ways the original designers would never have credited, ways that were merely suggested by their modified designation.

From outside, the AC-133A Slayers didn’t look that odd. There were some strange bumps and bulges, that was for sure, but a lot of transport aircraft had those. They were painted an odd color as well, a very dark bluish gray that camouflaged them at night much better than black would have done. It was only when visitors went on board and stood on the cargo deck they realized what the SOCOM had done. The cargo deck looked like something out of an eighteenth century ship of the line.

At the front was Battery A, three 20 millimeter M61 Vulcans, six-barreled Gatling guns that poured out 6,000 rounds per minute each. They were the guns tasked with area saturation, as the Slayer circled an area, those guns would pour shells into the target. Nothing survived a blast from Battery A unless it was under armor or in deep cover. The center of the aircraft was occupied by Battery B, three old Navy 40 millimeter Bofors guns. They’d been modified and were on trainable mounts that were keyed to unusually complex targeting systems. They also fired some very sophisticated ammunition that could slice through the thinner top armor of even a heavily-protected tank. But behind them was Battery C. At this point, every visitor, without exception, stopped dead and said the same thing “This is a joke right?” Because Battery C had three 105 millimeter howitzers. They’d been stripped of wheels of course and were on special mounts that absorbed most of their recoil. Even then, even an aircraft as big as an AC-133 couldn’t fire all three at once, they were there so one could be firing while the other two were reloaded.

Most outsiders had pictures of all three batteries firing at once, the Slayer flying over a target with a cloud of smoke issuing from the nine guns firing out of her port side. In fact, all three batteries required different approaches and different flight paths, different altitudes and different turn rates, for maximum effectiveness. They were an either/or proposition. Despite her massive brute-force gun battery, the Slayer was a precision instrument and, like most precision instruments, she required extreme skill if she was to deliver results.

Buffy had been operating out of Cyprus. By a historical quirk, the British still had bases there and every so often the U.S. used one of them. Now, Buffy was circling off the Sinai coast, with one simple job. Listen for the beacon signals from the crew of Marisol, plot their position and steer the SEAL rescue team in to pick them up. Of course, that assumed the crew had survived the shoot-down, hadn’t been taken prisoner or simply been killed by the first enemy troops to the area. If the latter had happened, it wouldn’t be a job for the SEALs any more. SAC avenged its own.

“Got them!.” One of the electronics technicians was manipulating his antennas, trying to get the finest possible directional cut. Meanwhile, the pilot had broken out of the circle and was flying parallel to the coast as fast as the aircraft could manage, six miles a minute. Doctrine was that the people on the ground would transmit for two minutes in twenty. The longer the baseline that could be achieved in those two minutes, the more precise the position. That two minutes seemed like twenty.

“OK Boss. Got a fix. Not brilliant but it puts them eight miles west of the crash site. Sensible guys, looks like they’re heading parallel to the coast before trying to get to the sea. We’ll patch through to SEAL Team Two and get them going the right way. Pell them we’ll get a movement bearing with the next hit.”

Sinai Desert, south of Gaza.

The sun had gone down hours before and the night was pitch black. Kozlowski and his crew had grown up in an America where electricity was plentiful and cheap, even far from large towns, there were street lights and neon signs. They polluted the sky, lightened the darkness and dimmed out the stars. Here, there was none of that, the sky was jet black, the stars shone with ferocious brilliance and the shadows on the ground were as dark as pitch.

The three airmen were resting, they’d been moving as fast as they could manage, trying to put as much ground between them and the crash site as possible. By their reckoning, they’d moved a good five miles, perhaps even six. But, trying to move fast in the soft sand was deadly tiring, their lungs felt red-raw and their legs seemed to have turned to rubber.

“Oh Damn.” Kozlowski whispered as if the desert was listening. He tapped Korrina on the arm and pointed. In the distance, hardly visible but quite distinct nonetheless, there were lights behind one of the lines of dunes. Either vehicle headlights or men on foot with powerful torches. Either way, they were clearly following the tracks left by Marisol’s crew.

“Up guys, we’ve got to move. They’re after us. Keep heading west and hope they’re trying casts. If we go far enough west, they may try north. And, whatever else you do, don’t forget to keep the beacon going.”

Sinai Coast, south of Gaza.

Captain Ivan Jaeger thought of his command as being the 23rd Panzer Armee. It pleased him to give the outrageously exaggerated designation to what was barely more than a company combat team. He had nine Walid armored personnel carriers, at first glance they looked like the old SdKfz-251 half-track but they had wheels at the back, not tracks. The Caliphate didn’t have the industrial ability to produce the elaborately engineered interleaved suspension of the older vehicles so they’d given the Walid four wheels at the back and a transmission that powered all six. The carriers were for his infantry, two platoons of them.

In addition he had a platoon of Chi-Teh-Kai tanks. They weren’t bad, they were fast, lightweight and heavily-gunned with a 100 mm cannon. For artillery he had a mortar section, a pair of 120 millimeters, also mounted in Walid carriers. Not a bad command for an officer. Mobile, it had lots of hitting power and his German veterans were more than a match for the tribal warriors they faced, most of the time anyway.

They’d had a report that there were large numbers of infidels in the bay ahead. The conclusion was obvious, they’d come to get the crew of the American bomber some damned fools had shot down earlier. As if they didn’t have enough to worry about, picking a confrontation with the Americans was the last thing they needed. Still, it might be just a bunch of refugees or even some real smugglers. It was time to find out. Fortunately, they had just the right people to do it.

Attached to his little command was another Caliphate vehicle, a small Safra armored car, barely more than a jeep. It had an officer and three men as its crew. Perfect for the job. Jaeger greeted the Caliphate officer effusively.

“My dear friend, I have not yet had a chance to tell you how much I value your services to my unit. Truly you are a great warrior. As such, I am going to ask you to accept the honor of leading us tonight. Surely, with such as you at our head, we cannot fail in our duty.”

The Caliphate officer jerked to attention with a crisp salute and his little Safra started off down the track towards the bay. In the shadows behind one of the tanks, a German Sergeant grinned nastily and ostentatiously put his fingers in his ears. Everybody else paused and waited silently, the air full of amused anticipation. They didn’t have to wait long, there was a flash of light then, a few seconds later, a dull boom and a brief crackle of rifle fire.

“Well, it appears we do have hostiles over there after all.” Jaeger eased up to the top of the tune and looked down the goat track. The little Safra was on its side and burning about fifty or sixty meters from where the track entered a jumble of rocks. If he looked hard he could see the bodies of the Caliphate officer and his men surrounding the destroyed vehicle. The explosion had been one of the American 3.5 inch rocket launchers, a big clumsy weapon. Jaeger couldn’t understand why the Americans kept it when they could have the much smaller, lighter and more effective RPG for the asking.

The rifle fire, now that was curious. It had been short, flat cracks, not the yapping noise of the Arisaka or the rhythmic jackhammer of the AK-47. All of Model’s Germans knew the sound of the AK well, not a few of them had nightmares featuring it. Jaeger was one of them. His second worst nightmare was waves of Russian infantry running at him, firing their AKs from the hip and screaming their ‘Urrah! Urrah!’

He preferred that to his worst nightmare. In 1947 he’d left his fiancée, a Luftwaffe telegraphist, in Berlin, they’d planned to marry in six months, that’s when he would have come back on his first leave from the front. But before that could happen, the Americans had dropped a dozen Hellburners on the city. And two hundred more on the rest of Germany. Ever so often, in his nightmares, he saw his fiancée holding her arms out to him for help as she melted in the fury of the American attack.

No, this rifle sound was new. It wasn’t even the deep thud of the American’s Garand. Well, it didn’t matter, he and his men would solve the mystery soon. The Battle of the Goat Track was about to start.

Sinai Desert, south of Gaza.

They couldn’t fool themselves any longer. The men with the lights were chasing them. For three hours they’d slowly but steadily closed the distance and now they were just the other side of the previous dune line. What had been a vague hint of lights was now a bright glare. It was over, there was no point in running any more. Kozlowski checked his inventory of weapons. Three .38 Small and Weak revolvers with 12 rounds each, three M-6 survival rifles with 20 rounds each - of .22 long rifle. They could put up a small fight, that was it.

“OK guys, this is it. We’ll hold here, it may just be a couple of guys and we can finish them before they realize we’ve stopped.”

That was nonsense, it wasn’t a case of vehicles or men with flashlights, it was vehicles and men with flashlights. Then, a miracle happened, without a sound to explain it, the lights went out. The men chasing them must have decided to turn back.

“Thank God for that. How far are we from the coast?” Kozlowski whispered.

“About twelve miles. Don’t worry about the guys chasing you. They’re gone.”

The voice came from his right, where nobody was supposed to be. Kozlowski jerked his head around. A figure was sprawled flat on the sand just a couple of feet from him.

“Major Mike Kozlowski?” Kozlowski nodded “Commander Jeff Thomas, United States Navy. We’ve come to take you home.”

Viceregal Palace, New Delhi, India

Sir Eric Haohoa had never seen an official state limousine do a skid-turn stop before. The maneuver caused a cloud of dust to rise around the vehicle but the haze didn’t hide an even more astonishing sight. The Ambassador herself was driving, something he’d never seen before. Before, she’d always been sitting decorously in the back while the car was handled by her official driver. For her to be driving herself was unprecedented. Mind you, he had heard about her driving skills, good but excessively fast would be the official summary. Some reports were more picturesque, they said the Ambassador’s driving was the only thing that made America’s National Security Advisor go white and pray.

She left the car and ran up the steps, scanning the crowd waiting there for somebody she could trust to give an accurate, concise answer. “Sir Eric. I low is he?”

“Grave, I fear Ma’am, very, very grave. It was just after dinner, Sir Martyn got up for brandy and cigars and, just, fell over. The doctors are dreadfully concerned. Sir Martyn has been asking for you. If you would come with me?”

He laid the way through the corridors of the palace. Normally they were bustling with life, with servants, both civil and domestic, going about their business. Even at night, the work of government never stopped but it had stopped now. People were standing, waiting quietly, trying to gather news. Some of the women were crying quietly, others looking towards Sir Martyn’s private apartments. In some, hope surged as they saw Sir Eric and The Ambassador. Perhaps it would be all right now. Surely, those two, together, could fix anything?