by C J Klinger
At the gate they were directed to building one, the location of the team studying interplanetary and interstellar travel. Doctor Mallory McCormick, the department Director met them in the hallway and escorted them to a small conference room where three other people, a man and two women sat around a conference table. The Doctor made the introductions and started the meeting by saying, “We are pleased that you and Major Donavan have joined us here, Doctor Williamson. I believe your program may be the answer to man’s quest to explore space.”
For the next two hours the NASA team talked to them about their long range plans to send astronauts to Ganymede and Europa, two of Jupiter’s most interesting moons. Long range plans to send a man to Alpha Centauri, the closest star to the solar system were theoretical at the moment and would have to wait for the development of a revolutionary space drive. Margret Chou, an engineer from the propulsion department said, “We have the technology to send a vehicle to Jupiter. That’s not the problem; the human equation is the problem. The round trip would require a minimum of four years and carrying four years of supplies would require a space ship too large for our current capabilities. If we can solve that problem, we could build a Mars base and launch a high speed, ION driven space ship from a Martian orbit much easier than one from Earth orbit.”
Cathy began to understand the reason for the meeting. “You believe the Mecrats might be the answer to your problem.”
Doctor McCormick answered. “That’s exactly correct, Dr. Williamson, the average person consumes one ton of food products a year. Even using concentrates and recycling, the weight of raw material required to support a human colony on Mars and send a crew to Jupiter on a four year voyage is staggering.”
Cathy expressed the conclusion they had all come to, “And a Mecrat requires a fraction of what a whole human being requires.”
Doctor McCormick smiled as if his favorite student had just come to the correct conclusion. “That is our belief. We would like you to validate our thinking.”
Cathy was intrigued with the idea, but expressed her concerns, “Have you considered the physiological aspects of such a long trip?”
“We have a whole department here at NASA that does nothing but work on that exact problem, Doctor Williamson, but we believe your experience in working with the Mecrats would be very helpful.”
Cathy nodded her agreement. “Major Donavan can also provide you with first-hand knowledge in that matter.”
The NASA engineers questioned both of them on the nature and the amount of logistic required to keep a Mecrat functioning. Greg shed some light on the eventual amount a Jupiter bound Mecrat would require by saying, “Remember, these are combat soldiers. They weigh upwards of nine hundred pounds and a lot of that is devoted to making them highly mobile and bullet proof. I doubt you’ll need all that capability on a space ship.”
At the end of another hour the assembled team was satisfied the concept of using a modified Mecrat was feasible. All that remained, other than a million logistic details was to see if the Mecrats were interested in making a journey that would isolate them for a period of four years. As well as she thought she knew them, Cathy was not at all sure what their reaction would be. The other problem was the military. How willing would the Pentagon be to let loose of their most effective weapons systems.
Chapter 46
Father Timothy woke with a start, but that was not unusual lately. With the Islamic State only fifty miles away, he had often come wide awake in the middle of the night at the slightest sound. Several of the Chaldean monasteries north of Mosul had been raided in the past year and some had even been destroyed. Many Christians and Shi’ite Muslims had been martyred for their faith. He had long since given up trying to understand why men who honored the same God felt threatened by the practices of a few monks and clerics in a collection of centuries-old building far from civilization. He finally concluded the zealots among the Islamic warriors must be afraid of anything that might diminish the role of their prophet in the human’s role of worshiping God, or Allah. In Timothy’s opinion, God, regardless of the name given to him by the various religions, was beyond the ability of man to diminish His power.
As a student of history, Father Timothy was acutely aware of the similarities between thirteenth century Christianity and the thirteenth century of Islam’s existence. The blind cruelties and intolerances of the inquisition were not too dissimilar to the practices of modern day Islamic radicals, but he had some doubt about the ability of the Mideast to survive the current rash of religious insanity.
This time the noise he heard was not his imagination. He got up and got dressed to check out what had awakened him. When he opened his bedroom door and turned on the hall light, he was confronted by a man in a black outfit wearing a black face mask.
“Silence, Monk, or this will be your last moment on earth,” the man said as he brandished a gleaming curved sword to emphasis his threat.
Father Timothy was not a coward. He had faced down attackers before, but the sight of the sword took all the fight out of him. A primal fear of being beheaded gave the sword more power than it merited as a weapon. He put his hands up to face level submissively, wishing to God he had the courage to yell out a warning. Maybe some of his fellow priest and brothers would be able to escape, but in the face of his fear, he was voiceless.
The masked man pushed him down the hall where Timothy heard shouts of surprise and one death-curdling scream. In fifteen minutes, six of the seven resident priests and brothers were herded into the chapel. Timothy took a quick inventory and realized Father Michael was missing. It must have been his screams he had heard earlier. The door to the chapel opened and fifteen civilians, a mixture of Christian and Shi’ite refugees who had been staying at the monastery were pushed into the room.
The Islamic warrior who had confronted Father Timothy stood in front of the group resting his hands on the hilt of the long, curved sword. In educated Arabic, he said, “You are my captives. If you behave, your life will be spared. If you give me a problem,” He swung the sword in a swift arc that left no doubts about the meaning of his next words. “You will be dealt with swiftly.”
Timothy finally found his courage and his voice. “What is to become of us?” he asked with as much bravado as he could muster.
The man looked at him for a long moment, perhaps trying to decide if the priest’s question met his description of a “problem.” Timothy stared back, accepting the fact he was going to die, if not today, sometime in the very near future.
The man surprised him by answering, ‘That depends on the Americans.”
Father Timothy was beyond caring. He smiled and said, “Ah, I guess it depends on who answers your call, the Americans or the Angels of Death.”
In one swift motion the masked man stepped forward and swung his sword in a practiced motion. He had let it be known to the horrified onlookers that the talkative monk had become a problem.
Chapter 47
Greg listened to the caller without interruption. His special unit reported directly to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who by law could not have direct operational control of the Mecrats. They were a de facto intermediary for the president, who had decided on the unique arrangement in order to keep the use of the highly effective battalion as service neutral as possible and to have a legitimate reason for keeping them out of the direct control of the intelligence services, who tended to be too heavy handed as far as Potus was concerned. Greg had not expected to get a call from the Chairman himself.
“Yes Sir, I understand, Sir,” Greg said with military alacrity when his boss asked him if he understood what the President wanted him to do. “We’ll be ready, Sir,” he said to a dead phone. General Maxwell Caldwell, the current Chairman was not one to wait for confirmation of his orders. If he was talking to you, he already knew you were going to carry them out.
Greg sat back in his chair and thought of all the things he and the Mecrats had trained and planned for. This would put most of those e
xercises to the rest. His secure fax machine dinged and started spitting out pages. Greg picked them up as they were printed and started reading the specifics of the order he had just received. It would be a test, he thought, a test of survival.
He considered calling Cathy at her lab, but decided instead to talk to his staff and the Mecrats first. They were the ones who would be doing the fighting and providing close support in the upcoming operation. The Mecrats’ mood had changed considerably when they learned they were being considered for NASA’s astronaut program. It was proof positive that their lives had meaning beyond being a fighting machine, but for now that would have to take a backseat to their primary purpose, an enhanced, combat, recon and tactical system.
“We have a new assignment,” he said to the gathered men, women and Mecrats. “The Islamic State has kidnapped a group of Christian monks and a dozen or so refugees from a monastery in northern Iraq and has announced a plan to publically execute all of them.”
“Are we supposed to rescue them, Sir?” Randy asked.
Greg nodded, but added, “This time we’re being ordered to do a little more than that, Sargent Rucker. In addition to helping rescue the hostages, the President wants us to take out the Islamic military leadership, the people who ordered the hit on you and Doctor Williamson.”
That information as to who was responsible for the attack on Randy and Cathy had come from the captured sniper who had traded it for a lesser sentence. The information trail had led to a terrorist cell, who in turn had given up their source in the Senate and their direct connection to Abdullah Al Sadad in Iraq. The members of the cell had not been offered a lesser sentence in exchange for information. It had been abstracted under duress. Greg had not questioned the exact nature of the duress used, but was reasonably certain it was not of the gentle persuasion type. Cathy had found it hilarious that one of Senator Webber’s junior aides had turned out to be the unwitting source of information that gave the sniper the location and time to set up an ambush site. She was eternally grateful to 10Rat and Greg for saving her from becoming a casualty.
“Paybacks a bitch,” Randy said and the other Mecrats echoed his sentiment. They had been itching to take it out on whoever who had ordered an assassination hit on MomRat.
Greg cautioned them against their enthusiasm, “Just remember, they know who we are and how we operate, so we can expect a real welcoming party.”
5Rat, Tony Boyer asked, “Do you think it’s a trap, Sir?”
“Well, considering the fact that they went fifty miles into Kurdish territory to specifically capture a group of Catholic monks and an assortment of Christian and Shi’ite refugees and hauled them back to Mosul to publically execute them, how could it be anything else? HQ believes they wanted bait that was guaranteed to make us come to them at a time and place of their choosing.”
Angela Gonzales, 3Rat was the best read among them said, “Into the valley of death rode the six hundred.”
Randy, who had also read Lord Tennyson’s epic poem, the Charge of The Light Brigade added, “Cannons on the right, cannons on the left.”
Greg did not smile. That was not one of his favorite poems. It illustrated what disastrous leadership could do to some of the finest fighting troops in the world. “Alright, alright, I get the picture,” he said with a tinge of anger in his voice. The Mecrats got the picture also and toned down their normal bantering.
Greg continued, “They’ve announced the location of the public beheadings, it’s a stadium called Al-Adara Al Mahalia in the middle of Mosul. I have to admit, it’s an excellent site for a trap.”
The Mecrats gathered around the large photo Greg had printed on his large scale printer. It was a very high resolution photo probably taken by a drone within the past twenty-four hours. The ruins of the Shi’ite’s Qadhib al Ban Mausoleum on the south side of the stadium graphically illustrated the ferocity of the Islamic States’ attack on the religious practices of their fellow Muslims, the Shi’ites. Greg wondered when the regional war in Iraq and Syria would spread to include all the Sunnis and Shi’ites in the Mideast. He was not hopeful these two sides would ever be able to reconcile the atrocities committed by both parties in this conflict. A part of him wanted America to just let them duke it out and then make peace with the winner, but he knew that was not practical or possible. America was too committed to its role as a world leader and too dependent on the Mideast’s resources, not so much for themselves, but for the stability it gave their longtime allies, the European Economic Union. He put those thoughts aside. He was a soldier and soldiers followed orders from their elected leaders, regardless of their own interpretation of events. “They make the mess. We clean it up,” he thought with a wry sense of humor.
The ‘Rats studied the photo for a full minute without comment, each of them trying to figure a way to get in and get out in one piece, and rescue the hostages at the same time. Randy was the most experienced combat soldier in the group. The other, less experienced soldiers usually took their cue from his reaction. He pointed a massive finger at the field in the middle of the stadium and said, “They’re planting IEDs. Look at the freshly turned dirt.”
Of the nine Mecrats, six were there because they had been victims of an IED. American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq had feared IEDs more than any weapon. The possibility of not only being killed, but of being horribly mutilated and surviving was always on their mind. It ate at their ability to go out and meet the enemy on the field of battle.
8Rat, Mary McKinsey, who had been an Army battle analyst before becoming a victim of an IED explosion, was the least talkative of the group. She lacked direct combat experience, but had a wealth of knowledge about what went on in a combat arena. She said, “I recognize that pattern.”
Greg was instantly alert to what the normally silent Mecrat said, “What do you mean, Mary?”
She moved up to the photo and pointed at the field. “Contrary to popular belief, not everyone in the IS camp is allowed to put out IEDs, especially this many and this kind.”
Greg and Randy were standing on either side of her. She looked at Randy and then down at Greg before continuing. “These are not IEDs. There’s too many of them, too close together. They’re pressure plate mines, probably an anti-tank variety.”
Greg’s intense interest now included curiosity. “How do you know that?”
“These patterns are like finger prints. No two people do it the same way, but the same person tends to repeat the same pattern. I saw this one several times in the Kirkuk area. Your bomber is a man named Al-Jabouri.” She paused for a second and then added, “I owe the bastard.”
None of the group needed an explanation of what 8Rat meant. Al-Jabouri must have been the one responsible for planting the explosive that had led to her becoming a Mecrat.
A plan was forming in Greg’s mind, “Are you sure they’re pressure plate mines and not cell phone operated explosives?”
Mary didn’t mind being questioned about her opinion. She was used to it. Some of her former superior officers had a hard time believing a petite brunette could be an expert in enemy explosives. She had quickly erased their doubt with her precise analysis of not only what the enemy had done, but what they were likely to do in a given situation.
“There are too many of them. Can you imagine coordinating forty cell phone numbers?”
Greg nodded his head in understanding. “They’re counting on us to charge in there and rescue the hostages, aren’t they?”
“Yep,” she stated positively, her one word answered reaffirming her certainty.
“Looks like we are going to have to tiptoe through the tulips,” Greg said.
Manny Escobedo, 6Rat asked, “Any way we can rescue them before they get to that field?”
“Now that’s the best idea I’ve heard,” Greg said. He turned to one of his staff members, Lieutenant Carter and said, “Joe, check with our intel source in the Pentagon and ask if they have any current information on the location of the hostages and whe
re they expect the Islamic leadership to be when the executions are conducted.”
“What about Colonel Westover?” John Stueben, 1Rat asked. The other Mecrats understood John’s question. The colonel had been their bag-of-tricks man in the past, providing them with powered wing suits and pop-up angel wings. The Mecrats stirred from their normal frozen position while listening. John’s question had stirred up visions of another surprise feature to spring on the enemy.
“It’s certainly worth asking him,” Greg said, equally interested in what the colonel might be able to come up with to help them in this particularly tough assignment. Without more information about where the enemy was going to be and where the hostages were located, the meeting soon ran out of gas. Greg let the Mecrats go to get ready for their night time exercise. He sat with his staff for a few minutes and handed out assignments. By six PM everybody had left and he called Cathy to see if she was still at the lab.
She answered on the first ring, “I was just getting ready to call you. One of my assistance is leaving the program and we’re going to the Officers Club to have a few farewell drinks. Come join us.”
They had not been back to the Officers Club since their unpleasant experience with the cocky air force officer. He hesitated for a second, but the thought of her being in the presence of so many hot shot Air Force pilots, who seemed to be perpetually horny didn’t sit well with him, plus the idea of a drink sounded good. “I’ll be there in fifteen, Watch out for those air force guys.”
“Why Major Donavan, do I detect a note of jealousy in your voice?”