Or had they hoped that the United States and Russia would destroy each other?
He pushed the thought aside. The plan, if that had been the plan, had gone badly wrong...but they had still crippled the United States. It no longer mattered. His responsibility, now, was to Operation EXODUS and to save what they could of the United States.
***
The President sat in her chair, facing the window and staring out towards the lights of Washington DC. There were fewer lights shining out in the darkened city than she would have preferred, a chilling reminder that many of the people responsible for keeping the city running were either dead or infected with Henderson’s Disease. Her eyes sought out the column of smoke from the incinerator, where the dead bodies were burned to ashes to destroy the disease lurking within the decaying corpses. History would record her as the President who had lost a third of the country outright and uprooted most of the remaining population – and she was sure that she could forget about re-election. She wasn't even sure that she wanted to run for re-election, not after making so many hard choices.
“The Iraqis are still running into heavy resistance,” General Spencer said, “but they are confident of success. Henderson’s Disease is weakening the enemy and destroying their morale.”
“And much of the city will be destroyed,” the President said, flatly. She’d heard from an organisation of American Muslims, pleading for Mecca to be spared the fire. She’d told them that the fate of the city was in the hands of the Iraqi Government, for it was no longer an American concern. She didn't care what happened to it, as long as it was no longer used as a base for terrorists and insurgents. “How long will the fighting continue?”
“Impossible to predict, Madam President,” General Spencer said. “Fighting within a built-up area is always dangerous, even though the Iraqis have experience second only to us in the field. Perhaps better than us, in some ways; they don’t hesitate to be ruthless. It helps that they’re determined to liberate Mecca from the Saudis and keep it for themselves.”
The President smiled, although her thoughts were cold. The United Nations had been pretty much a dead letter since the crisis began, but she’d received a note from the Islamic Congress of the United Nations demanding that she pulled Iraqi and American troops out of the Holy Cities. She hadn't bothered to reply to them directly, although she had warned the King of Jordan to keep his nose out of the Holy City. The Iraqis could have it and they’d do a better job with it. They could hardly do a worse one.
“Overall, we may be looking at another two weeks of heavy fighting within the city,” the General added. “There’s just no way to make a more accurate prediction. They may all drop dead of Henderson’s Disease tomorrow and save the Iraqis from destroying the remainder of the city.”
“We should be so lucky,” the President said. She turned the chair around and placed her hands on her desk, feeling the ancient wood against her fingers. It had been a gift from the British Queen Victoria, constructed from timbers that had come from HMS Resolute, a famous British warship that had played a significant role in maintaining peace. Many of her predecessors had worked at the desk. In her darker moments, she had wondered if she would be the last. “What does it mean for us, operationally?”
“Apart from a handful of SF units, our only contribution to the operation comes in the form of aircraft and logistical support,” Spencer said. “The Iraqi clergy has declared that that is legal, provided that we don’t actually let our non-Muslim people set foot within the city itself. I doubt it would hold up in a Saudi courtroom.” He snorted. “Apart from that, it doesn't affect us operationally at all; the Marines and the 3rd Infantry Division are closing in on Riyadh and sealing off the city. In two more days, that city will be sealed up tighter than a drum.”
The President nodded slowly. “And then what?”
Spencer winced. “That, Madam President, is for you to decide,” he said. “The defenders of Mecca, whatever else one can say about them, sent most of the city’s population down to Jeddah, where they wouldn’t be caught up in the fighting. They were put in refugee camps and Henderson’s Disease swept through rapidly...most of them will not survive the week. I don’t know if it was intentional or merely a tragic accident. The fighting has been very costly for the defenders, but we do know that most of those who died were enemy combatants.
“The same cannot be said for Riyadh,” he added. “The defenders have not been allowing anyone to leave the city. The city’s population numbers around four million lives – perhaps more, as people have been fleeing into the city – and all of them will be at risk if we have to fight our way deep into Riyadh. The defenders have all the normal weapons of war for the Middle East, but they also have tanks, long-range guns and the remains of the Saudi IADS. If we hit the city, it could cost us immensely.”
The President studied her fingers, wondering how her predecessors would have handled it. Lincoln hadn't blinked at all the blood he’d shed to hold the Union together, but Clinton had lost a mere handful of men and backed off, creating an impression of American weakness that had haunted his successors. Roosevelt had fought Hitler and refused to abandon the war; Truman had accepted a draw in Korea, creating another rogue state to plague America over the years. To be President was to be Head of State as well as Head of Government; the President always took the blame, even if he or she was personally blameless. Harry Truman, she knew, had been right; the buck did stop with her.
She gathered herself. “How badly could it hurt us?”
Spencer didn't hide anything from her. “The Saudis have been preparing the city for war,” he said. “They will have turned it into a fortress comparable to Fallujah, at the very worst; the best case we can hope for is something like Baghdad. Fallujah cost us nearly a hundred killed and over five hundred wounded. Riyadh may well be worse. We could be looking at over three hundred fatal casualties, perhaps more.
“And there are upwards of four million civilians within the city,” he added. “Some of them will have been armed and pointed towards the sound of the guns; others will be cowering, unable to escape as the fighting sweeps over them, knowing that they will be targeted by both sides in the battle. We could see most of them die in the fighting, or as food and water supplies start to run out. Or perhaps Henderson’s Disease will get them. It seems unlikely that it won’t have reached Riyadh by now.”
“Four million civilians,” the President repeated. “Four million...”
The number was almost beyond imagination. A single death was a tragedy, a million deaths was a statistic...and far too many Americans had become statistics in the last two months. She didn't know how many Americans were dead because of Henderson’s Disease, but estimates kept soaring upwards, counting the dead and dying. They would be pulling bodies out of the wreckage for a very long time.
She looked up at the General. “What are our options?”
Spencer counted off points on his fingers. “We hit the city and try to storm it,” he said. “We surround the city and wait for them to surrender. We destroy the city.”
His words seemed to hang in the air, each one truly portentous. “If we hit the city, much of the population will be caught in the crossfire,” he said. “We will turn the city into a meat-grinder, with thousands dead every day.
“If we surround the city, most of those four million will die,” he continued. “The men with the guns will eat and drink first. They may try to expel the civilians to avoid having to feed so many mouths, or they may kill them themselves. As the civilian population weakens, diseases – not just Henderson’s Disease, but others – will sweep through the population, killing many of them. The defenders will find themselves caught in a charnel house, but by then it will be too late. The entire city will come apart.”
“If they did expel the civilians, we could take care of them,” the President said.
“At the cost of prolonging the siege,” Spencer pointed out. “It’s basic logistics, Madam President; they hammere
d it into us at Staff College. A supply of food that will keep a hundred men going for ten weeks will only keep a thousand men going for a single week. If they send out those four million civilians, the defenders can last longer before they die – and we will have to feed the civilians. We don’t have the logistics chain to provide sufficient food for them all. We’re operating on something of a shoestring as it is.”
He hesitated. “And we might have to hit the city anyway, once the civilians are out of the way,” he concluded. “We’d be sending our men into a meat-grinder.”
The President nodded slowly. “And the final option?”
“We nuke the city,” Spencer said, unflinchingly. “We destroy the city completely, exterminating the defenders and those who unleashed Henderson’s Disease on our country. “
The President looked back out of the window, knowing what many of her countrymen would say. They’d demand that Saudi be nuked, at once; indeed, the one threat of impeachment she’d faced had been because she hadn't taken the gloves off and nuked Saudi Arabia back into the Stone Age. They wouldn't care about the Saudi civilians, but then, they’d grown up in a nation where the will of the people decided who ruled the country. The concept of an ultra-repressive state was alien to them; they couldn't accept that the Saudi civilians had no say in their government. And then, they’d all seen the television broadcasts of Arabs screaming their delight in the streets, mocking how something as tiny, as invisible, as a disease had brought the most powerful nation in the world to its knees.
She had to take a longer view. Opening the nuclear lockbox would – inevitably – change the world. And yet, the world had been changed; Henderson’s Disease was everywhere now. No other country would lift a finger to protect Saudi Arabia from America’s rage. The terrorists had united the world against them.
And she had to discourage someone from trying it again, perhaps with something more dangerous than Henderson’s Disease.
“Once our forces take up positions around the city, we will send a final demand for surrender,” she said, flatly. She couldn't quite believe her own words. Nuclear weapons had been a taboo for so long that using them was almost unthinkable. “If they accept, well and good; if not, we will destroy the city and everyone within it.”
Chapter Forty-Five
It may be sweet and fitting to die for one’s country, but dying at the hands of one’s own countrymen is just annoying...
-Sergeant Al Hattlestad
New York, USA
Day 54
“Line up over by the buses,” Al barked, through the megaphone. “Get your vaccination certificates ready and prepare to be inspected.”
He watched as hundreds of New Yorkers lined up unwillingly in front of the buses. Even getting the prison vans into New York had required a major logistic effort, for the gangs were out in force. The police and National Guard had been taking heavy fire from various gangs and had been responding with deadly force. All of the normal rules and regulations were completely out of the window now, for New York was effectively a lawless state. Al hated to see his beloved city collapsing like that, but there was no other choice. The military manpower to clear the streets simply didn’t exist.
“I need to see your certificate,” he said, as a thirteen-year-old girl appeared, towing two younger girls behind her. She looked as if she’d grown up overnight, carrying a pistol he recognised as a Desert Eagle – it looked too large for her frame – under her shirt. Her blonde pigtails contrasted oddly with her worn appearance. “Are they your sisters?”
“They’re my charges,” the girl said, with an odd air of defiance. “I promised their father that I would take care of them and take care of them I have.”
Al checked her vaccination certificate and confirmed that Stephanie Ash had been vaccinated, nine days ago. It was a surprise to discover that she was still in the city, but perhaps it had been yet another bureaucratic snafu. No matter what the civil liberties groups believed, it was hard for anyone, even the government, to keep track of everyone in the city. He looked up at the crowds forming into impatient lines and shivered. They had never run a full evacuation drill for a major city, let alone New York. They were just making it up as they went along. The exercises on paper simply didn’t match up to reality.
“I'm sure he will be pleased to hear that,” Al said, with a grin. He passed her the certificate and checked the ones issued to the two young girls, both of whom had been vaccinated at the same time. Their father, he saw, was a soldier, someone probably deployed to the Middle East or one of the blockade forces. His kids should have been transported out weeks ago. “I think you’ve done a great job.”
He paused, just for a moment, and then tapped the pistol. “Do you have ammunition for that, young lady?”
“Yes, sir,” Stephanie said. She shook the bag she carried over her shoulder. “I have enough to get by.”
“Hang on to it,” Al advised. “You will probably have to place it in storage at the refugee camp, but it should be fine for the moment.”
He watched as she followed the policewoman to their seats in the bus and then turned to the next person, an elderly gentleman who seemed determined to grumble about how it had never been like this in his day. Al nodded politely at all the right moments, silently grateful that the man had a certificate and showed no signs of objection when Al checked it and then ran it through the scanner. The photo on the card was poor – it looked as if the old man was already dead, something common to most ID Cards – but it definitely matched the man in front of him. Al allowed himself a moment of relief and then pointed the man towards his own seat. A pair of teenage boys – perhaps gang members, although he hoped not – tried to stare him down, only to discover that Al had no patience for such games. A quick punch to the belly brought one of them to his knees and the other promptly lost all enthusiasm for picking a fight. Al was tempted to leave them, but he settled instead for handcuffing them to the metal bench and making a mental note to ensure that the refugee camp took care of them.
“But I do have a certificate,” a middle-aged woman protested. Her eyes were wide with pleading, her two screaming kids distracting everyone from listening to her. “I took your damned injection.”
Al silently counted to ten under his breath. “Madam, you took the injection two days ago,” he explained. The line of code under her photograph warned that she'd been injected against her will, along with her children. There was no longer any time to allow someone to refuse an injection. “You have to wait for three more days before you can be evacuated out of the city.”
The woman looked as if she was going to explode. “But I was promised that I would be transported out of the city,” she said, shaking with fury and – hidden under the rage – fear. “I was promised!”
“And you will be,” Al assured her, “as soon as you have spent three more days without symptoms.”
He scowled to himself as the crowd pressed against the buses, despite the best efforts of the policemen on guard duty. The chance to leave the city was not one that many people wanted to miss. He couldn’t blame them, but it was a major headache; they had orders to keep families together, yet everyone kept pushing and prodding, scattering families all over the square. He could see strong men yelling angrily at the policemen, and younger women pleading for their babies to be lifted out of the city even if they couldn’t go with them. There was, at least in theory, enough transport for the entire city, but in practice there would never be enough. The bus drivers were all volunteers and none of them were very happy with the situation.
The woman stormed off, muttering about how she was going to sue the government and the NYPD for everything they had between them. Al watched her go for a minute, wondering if she would try something stupid, before he turned his attention back to the next person. A stone bounced off the bus as someone threw it, diving back into the crowd before the policemen could respond with lethal force. Law and order were breaking down rapidly and yet people were still coming, despite
the fear of being in a crowd. Others were throwing stones too now, aiming at the vehicles and the policemen guarding them. It wouldn’t be long before there was an accident.
“That’s the van full, Sergeant,” Jane reported. The young policewoman shouldn’t have been on duty at all – she was a dispatcher, rather than someone used to patrolling the city – but she’d volunteered and the NYPD was very shorthanded. “We even have a few children sitting on the floor.”
Al nodded and keyed his radio. “This is Bus Four,” he said. “We are ready to move out.”
Another hail of stones bounced off the bus. “Understood, Bus Four,” the dispatcher said. “You are cleared to depart.”
Jane went forward and took the wheel, ignoring the snide comments from the handcuffed youths. The engine rumbled to life and she pulled out of the parking space, heading out onto the road leading away from the centre of town. A couple of months ago, during rush hour, driving out of the city could take hours, but now the police and the military were the only people driving on the road. The supply of gas had dried up long before the war had broken out in the Middle East.
The Coward's Way of War Page 44