The Wrath of God

by Jim Balzotti

  Turning again to the map and pointing to Africa, Xi continued, “This whole continent is ours. They had no weapons or troop strength to oppose us. Our troops and leadership have in one quick year commanded every key position. Africa holds vast amounts of uranium, iron, and copper, in addition to coltan, the mineral China needs since it is critical to our computer processor’s performance. With the new world economy, where the only currency is our yuan, they do have gold, but it is not as important as it once was, although it still has some uses in technology. Same for their diamonds. The advantage in controlling the world’s economy is that we determine what a valuable currency is and what is not. By outlawing the trading or sale of gold and diamonds, we can fully control the economic marketplace.

  “Australia will give us some coal, natural gas, and iron ore, but the prize is its rich deposits of uranium ore, which we can refine for our nuclear power. We will put off any invasion there until we’ve dealt with the other major global powers. We can expect resistance, necessitating a commitment of troops to both Australia and New Zealand. They are both countries that should know when they are defeated, but the Aussies and Kiwis love a good fight, no matter what the odds. The goal is not to utilize nuclear weapons. It will be implemented only as a last resort. We’ll deal with them after we deal with the Middle East.

  “North America was our greatest prize. Grains, natural gas and coal deposits, cattle, timber, and, of course, land. It has everything we need to expand and subsequently sustain our citizens. Mexico, not so much. Some agricultural growth and, of course, the native black bean, which is high in protein and ideal for exportation to North Korea as a food staple. Mexico had no viable government. It is ruled by warring drug cartels, and we have a working relationship with them at the moment. They are well aware they’re not dealing with the weak-kneed politicians from Washington. The cartels may peddle their drugs if the drugs and the infighting is contained to Central America. If not, it has been made clear that we have no problem utilizing Chinese nukes. Mexico is not essential and is of little value.”

  “And what of Japan, sir?”

  Xi turned quickly, his lips pulled back in a sneer. “Japan will cease to exist. We will wipe them off the map! Nanking will be finally avenged. China has a long memory when it comes to the atrocities Japan committed against us. Three hundred thousand innocent and unarmed men, women, and children murdered and raped at the hands of the cowardly Japanese army. I for one celebrated when the Americans bombed their cities. I have already informed North Korea that both South Korea and Japan are theirs to do with as they choose, providing it includes exterminating those vermin from the face of the Earth. Without the help of the US military, neither country can stand on its own. This should appease our friends in North Korea and solve their need for land and food. Killing the Japanese should satisfy their bloodlust.”

  Turning toward the Middle East he continued, “This area will be more difficult. The Jews and the Arabs are true believers in their faith and will defend it to the death. One thing I did not count on, but considered a possibility, was them setting aside religious differences to join forces in opposition. Our threat of nuclear annihilation hasn’t moved them into surrendering. I fear even a limited target strike would do nothing, or provoke a retaliatory strike. We don’t have an accurate assessment of their nuclear weapons. Our strategy is to isolate the region. Containment and subsequent takeover. This is why religion is so dangerous to China. It is a rallying cry that draws fanatics, and you can’t control fanatics. You can only kill them. My preference is to keep the region intact. If they do not surrender to our yoke, they’ll leave us no choice. Is it not obvious that if we could topple the great America, we can conquer anyone? Again, the dangers of religion. The religious fanatics truly believe God is on their side.”

  Looking at the map of the Middle East, Chang said, “They will come to know that China is the new god.”

  Winter 2028

  Northern Maine

  There is no greater fury than the hate that is fired in the white-hot coals of revenge.

  Lawrence “Spike” Blacklock sat in the woods still dark with night. A flickering pale yellow light was given off by a small campfire he built, tucked into an outcrop of rocks so as not to be seen. A percolating pot of coffee was suspended over the fire. Squatting on the ground still wet with the early morning dew, he poured himself a cup using the speckled metallic blue mug his wife had given him years before. She’d presented the mug to him as a gift when he opened his wilderness camps. She joked it would remind him of her every time he held the cup to his lips. It was now all he had left of her. It was his most cherished possession. As he lifted the cup, loving memories of her whirled through his mind.

  Around him were his four soldiers still sleeping in black hemp hammocks strung up between the trees. They were alone except for the intermittent sounds of nocturnal animals, both predator and prey trying to survive. The occasional shriek and the dry rustle of thorn bushes were the only other sounds that punctuated the eerily quiet night. He was ever vigilant and didn’t know how not to be anything else, always studying the shadows in the woods knowing that any one of them could act as camouflage for Chinese troops. The forest floor was a blanket of soft, damp pine needles, which would keep their approach silent, but he knew he could rely on the distinctive screech of the great horned owl to alert him to any impending danger. He let his men sleep a little while longer. Lawrence and his soldiers had been living by the laws of the wilderness for three years now. They were all loners, men who, like him, had lost everything and everyone they loved at the hands of the brutal Chinese. These men were dedicated to Lawrence and followed his every command unquestioned. They respected his combat experience and his ability to navigate the wild, both unseen and unheard. They shared a common purpose…to seek revenge on the Chinese.

  Spike was a compact man and had the lean, carved muscles of a leopard, and some would say he was every bit as dangerous, if not more so. He had the endurance and physical stamina of men half his age. His hair was closely clipped, short enough that you could not tell if he had yet begun to gray. His hands were hard and calloused as a chunk of a gnarled piece of oak, with the scars befitting a fighting soldier. He had a handsome face that showed great intelligence, but also fearlessness and inner toughness. His most striking feature was his steel-blue eyes. Beneath the eyes and the handsome rugged face was a man capable of extreme violence. Most women were initially drawn to his gaze then, sensing the violence beneath, would quickly back away. Every woman except Amy. Any alarm bells that Amy might have had about Lawrence were curiously silent. She loved him totally, accepted him for the man he was. He never lost his patience with her or raised his voice in anger. She never once feared him, but felt safe and secure for the first time in her life when nestled in his arms. The thought of her, and her death, was ever present in his mind. He was haunted by the thought that if she had left Miami just one day earlier, she might still be alive. The loss of his wife was an open, painful wound that would not heal. He did not want it to heal. He kept the red-hot embers of the memories of their life together stoked and burning intensely. It fueled his hatred for the Chinese.

  Sleep did not come easy for him, and when it did come, it brought with it her terrible screams as the Chinese put her to death, as surely as if they pulled the trigger. In every dream, he was running toward her to save her, but his legs were mired down in mud as she looked at him with pleading eyes before they faded, giving up her life.

  They had met in the north island of New Zealand. He was on leave from the American war in Afghanistan, nursing some broken ribs suffered on a covert mission. They met in a bar in Wellington. Amy was on a business trip from New York City, selling her line of expensive diamond watches. She sidled up to the crowded bar and took the empty seat next to him. He was surprised when she ordered two shots of Johnny Walker Blue, and when the bartender placed the two shots down, slid one next to him. Amy clinked her glass with his, and in one quick motion thr
ew the shot down and ordered two more. She turned sideways on her stool, looking at him squarely in the face and said, “So what’s your story, handsome?” That sort of stuff never happened to him. He was a loner in every sense of the term. He rarely dated, and when he did, the girl would inevitably break it off. His underlying anger and violence would first attract and then repel women. He made them nervous, like the lion that wasn’t contained by the zoo bars anymore. There were the bad boys, and then there was Lawrence. He would have made a pet out of most of the men who thought they were bad.

  He had reached a point where he didn’t even try to connect with women. He had plenty of one- or two-night affairs but never let them go beyond that point. His world became a cold and lonely place, which was just fine by him.

  They chattered about everything and nothing, and when the bartender announced last call they both were genuinely surprised that the evening had passed so quickly. She slid off her stool, took him by the hand, and invited him up to her room—a suite, really—at the posh Four Seasons Hotel across the street. He accepted with just a silent nod of his head.

  When they arrived at the room, he didn’t want her to turn on the lights. She let him undress her, and when he started to remove his own clothing, she stopped him, wanting to do it herself. Although the room was dark, with only minimal light streaming in from the open windows, he was embarrassed by the patchwork of scars on his body. As she slowly undressed him, she kissed each scar made by either a bullet or a knife and asked him to tell her the story behind each wound. He surprised himself by telling her. They began to make love softly, tentatively. They explored each other’s bodies with great respect and tenderness. He had never experienced such lovemaking. For him, despite the many women, it was little more than the satisfaction of a primal, lustful urge. Ordinarily he would put on his clothes and be out the door the moment the sex act was finished. For the first time, he experienced an emotional connection, exhilarating and scaring him simultaneously. He didn’t want to leave.

  Lawrence wanted to know everything about her. As they lay in bed in each other’s arms, she told him that she was from an Italian family in East Boston. Her parents owned and operated a small pizzeria and Italian restaurant. She was the oldest of three children and had two brothers, one a cop in New York, the other an immigration attorney in Washington DC. Her mother worked in the restaurant but pretty much stayed home to raise the kids. Her father, unlike the traditional Italian male at the time, encouraged Amy to go to college, telling her she could accomplish anything she set her mind to. When she was still a young child, he took her snowmobiling in Maine, another time on a helicopter ride in New Hampshire, and when she turned eighteen, he took her skydiving in western Massachusetts. She went to college at UConn, found she had an aptitude for business, and upon graduating with honors, went to work for a large marketing firm in New York City. After five years, she believed she was being stifled by the man who owned the firm. She left the security of a large salary, pension plan, and all the usual perks in order to strike out on her own. She now had a large office in Manhattan with a commanding view of the New York skyline but lived in a loft in Brooklyn in an old converted chocolate factory with her dog, Milo. Now, a few short years later, she headed a successful company with over fifty employees and with customers around the world.

  “You live with a dog?”

  “Milo. He’s a mutt. After dating loser after loser, I gave up on men. It just was easier. And he never disappoints me,” she said with a smile, then she leaned over and tugged at his earlobe. “Now what’s your story, my handsome soldier?”

  He told her. All of it. Surprising even him. He was born in New Zealand, an only child of a retired military officer and a mother who was a successful actress. He was a handful at an early age, revealing a willful independent streak. In order to instill discipline, his parents enrolled him in a highly rated boarding school, Saint Kevin’s in Oamaru, until the age of fifteen, when the headmaster had advised his father he would be better served attending a military academy. He had a quiet, brooding disposition, a loner by nature, and when he was teased by his classmates, he responded with his fists. As a result of his last fight, the local mayor’s son’s nose was broken, and that, as they say, was that. He was asked to leave.

  His father put him in the New Zealand Military Academy, and under the strict tutelage of the proctors, he flourished. He excelled at math and science, and became more than proficient at survival skills, hand-to-hand combat, communications, and weapons training. The fact that he preferred his own company allowed him to excel in solo settings. He played rugby for the New Zealand Under 21 team as a forward, and proudly wore the Black. His deft footwork and thrilling line breaks, plus a willingness to sacrifice his body, earned him the respect of both his teammates and adversaries. He earned his nickname, Spike, by spiking the ball defiantly in the defenders’ faces when he scored a goal.

  Upon graduation, he joined the New Zealand Army and was stationed at the Waiouru Army Base. There he became a commando in the intelligence division of the New Zealand Special Air Service and was recruited by the SAS. He was trained to be a sniper and taught to survive in harsh environments with only his wits to keep him alive. Soon after, he was transferred to the base in Hobsonville. Although his country was not involved in any conflicts, they would almost always fight side by side with the United States. The Kiwis loved a good fight. He volunteered and was deployed to the Helmut province in Afghanistan. For two tours, Lawrence operated deep behind enemy lines without backup or radio, bringing instant death to Taliban leaders. No one was safe from his sniper rifle. His stealth and ability to kill from long range earned him the nickname of the White Ghost. He became a legend, a myth in the mountains. Hardened enemy soldiers would speak of him in hushed tones, as if the mere mention of his name would summon him like a demon from hell bringing death with him. A large bounty was placed on his head, but no one was eager to try to collect it.

  He found out he was very good at killing.

  Amy and Lawrence spent the weekend together and were inseparable. She extended her stay in order to explore the countryside of New Zealand with him. They traveled to Oamaru to see the blue penguin colony; he bought her a cute, small stuffed penguin which she promptly named Gus, after a German shepherd she had and loved as a child. They dined at the historic Pig & Whistle, and when they walked in, there was a moment that the bartender considered throwing Lawrence out. Lawrence had forgotten that two years previous, he had gotten into a brawl with three Aussie soldiers, putting two of them in the local hospital. The only reason Lawrence wasn’t arrested was because of the stripes of the SAS on his shoulders. Evidently the bartender did not forget the incident, but Amy cooed and smoothed things over. The barkeep still kept a wary eye on Lawrence and felt infinitely better when they walked out the door.

  They went to Queenstown and stayed at a small B&B, hiking the beach hand in hand in the morning, and making love in the afternoon. They drove to the Kawarau Bridge made famous by Kiwi legend AJ Hackett, who years earlier decided to attach a bungee cord to his feet and jumped 142 feet off a bridge, hoping the rubber cord would hold so he wouldn’t plunge to his death. Now the same man ran a commercial business where hundreds came daily just to watch the few brave or crazy people repeating his daring feat. Munching on a basket of golden fried fish, Amy said, “So whaddaya think? Want to jump?” Lawrence looked at this little pretty girl with amazement. “No. I do not. No! I’m deployed in a hostile country where people are always trying to either blow me up or shoot me. I have no intention of dying because some idiot attendant didn’t tie the cord around my ankles properly!”

  Amy looked at the small line of people buying tickets and said, “Well I’m going,” and leaving Lawrence speechless, headed off to buy her ticket. Five minutes later, he watched in shock as Amy climbed the platform that hovered over the rock-strewn Kawarau River below. With a wave and not a moment’s hesitation, she swan dived off the narrow platform. Now this is some kind of
girl, he thought with pride.

  The next day they checked out of the B&B and took a guided tour of five of the premium vineyards in Central Otago, a beautiful region marked with rugged snowcapped mountains and picturesque alpine lakes, where they sipped wine and sampled the local cheeses. They continued driving south, sadly knowing that the time was quickly approaching when they must say good-bye, something neither one of them wished to acknowledge. Lawrence’s leave was almost up, and he was due to report back to his company. Amy appeared content to extend her vacation even further, not wanting this dream to end. She laughed to herself that she had to fly almost twenty-three hours around the world to find a man she could love and a country that was the most beautiful she had ever seen.

  Their driving continued down the coast, along a scenic road lined with trees, leaves the color of a deep jade, still glistening with the morning’s dew. Rounding a bend, they pulled into the tiny hamlet of Lake Tekapo. There, perched on the shore of the lake, was the Church of the Good Shepherd. It stood alone, built in homage to God. Unlike some other churches that reflected wealth and power, it was a small, simple building constructed of wooden beams and stone, built on a foundation of rough, unchipped rocks, with heavy wooden shingles for a roof and adorned with a simple wooden cross. The original builders wanted a church to reflect the simple carpenter whose teachings of love and forgiveness opened the kingdom of heaven to all.

  From their car they watched as a small wedding with no more than a dozen people was concluding. The priest was giving his final blessings as the newly married couple was exiting the doorway in a rainstorm of rice thrown by family and well-wishers. The wedding party gathered around the newly married husband and wife, then walked to the inn across the street, where the celebration would continue. Amy took Lawrence’s hand and went inside. The church overlooked a still and serene Lake Tekapo. They walked to the window and looked out; neither a boat nor person could be seen, and the water was as clear and still as an enormous flat piece of blue glass stretching out for miles. They stood there, motionless, barely aware of their breathing. Neither Amy nor Lawrence considered themselves a devoutly religious person. They believed in God and went to the obligatory weddings and funerals, but that day, they felt God’s love flow into them. Almost simultaneously, they turned to each other and said, “Let’s get married.”