CHAPTER 34
The American answer was not long in coming. As the sun rose the next morning, the American Whales that had disappeared beneath the waves of the Bight of Biafra breached within the Persian Gulf and the American surface fleet sailed through the Strait of Hormuz.
As the sun went down, the American President appeared on all television channels with a devilishly clever response to the Caliph.
“The United States pledges that it will not be the first to use nuclear weapons in any conflict that may arise between us against the Caliphate. But we will respond to any first use of a single nuclear weapon against the territory of the United States or its military forces anywhere in the world with an overwhelming nuclear strike of our own with our superior forces. Civilian targets and population centers will not be spared. God bless America.”
* * * *
The plan of the Great Satan then unfolded cynically, implacably, and swiftly. The combined American fleets took up position just outside the territorial waters of Kuwait. The American Secretary of Energy was dispatched to Kuwait to negotiate a “purely commercial treaty” with the Emir. His plane was not allowed to land and the Emir heroically declared that he would never negotiate treason to the Caliphate with the American aggressors.
Two days later he was deposed and arrested by a military junta. Loyal troops attempted to rescue him. Fighting between the two forces broke out and spread to the streets of Kuwait City. The Emir was forced to appeal for calm. He was ignored. Two days after that, another coup brought forward a son of the Emir, who claimed the throne and called for a plebiscite to choose between continuing as an emirate within the Caliphate or establishing democratic Republic of Kuwait, promising to abdicate if “democracy prevailed.” The treasonous false Emir called on the Americans to intervene to “restore order.”
The American President agreed to the “request” of its puppet. The admiral in command of the American fleet ordered that fighting must cease within twenty four hours. When it did not, hundreds of American Falcons appeared over Kuwait City, circling, and firing random rockets at nothing in particular. Fighting between the military factions ceased. Terrified civilians retreated from the streets to their homes or fled into the desert.
The false Emir formally abdicated, then declared himself “Provisional President,” promised democratic elections within sixty days, and requested that the United States provide technical experts to conduct them.
The Caliphate declared him a traitor and began moving tanks and mechanized infantry divisions towards the border of Kuwait. The “Provisional President of the Republic of Kuwait” declared its independence and while the Caliphate forces were still moving towards the border “requested” American protection from them.
The Americans warned the Caliphate against crossing the border with its ground troops or attacking the “Republic of Kuwait” from the air. A least a thousand Falcons, hundreds of Wasps, no few Vultures, and even manned fighters from the aircraft carriers were deployed as an aerial umbrella over all of Kuwait but scrupulously avoided violating Caliphate air space.
General Moustapha had been watching these dire events on the television monitors in his own headquarters, but as American helicopters began landing in the Kuwait oil fields and airports, and their cruisers, destroyers, and troop ships began launching hovercraft, he arrived at the former headquarters of the psychological warfare corps, much to my surprise.
“Why have you come here?” I asked, before belatedly saluting.
General Moustapha did not bother to return my salute as he sat down on the edge of a chair, intently regarding my bank of television screens. “What a brilliant operation!” he said, shaking his head. “Like them or not, you must admire their strategic genius, must you not, Osama?” he declared.
“You admire such cynical treachery? And you call yourself a Muslim?”
Moustapha did not bother to take offence either. “I’m a general,” he said, “and I admit that I not only admire those who planned this, but envy them. This will be studied in military academies beside the campaigns of Caesar and Napoleon! And without a shot being fired!”
“Thus far,” I growled. “And why now watch this catastrophe with me, of all people?”
“Because I admire your tactical genius, Osama the Gun,” he told me, “more than anyone else under my command. Better to watch a chess match with someone who really knows the game.”
“Chess match!”
“Chess is a game of war maneuvering, and thus far this has been a war of maneuvers alone, so how is this not a game of chess?”
“Until the shooting starts.”
“If it ever will…regard…”
Embedded CNN camera crews showed helicopters disgorging American ground troops, clad in skin-tight silver suits and helmets like those of astronauts onto airport tarmack. More CNN cameras showed heavy hovercraft coming ashore and unloading armored personnel carriers, light vehicles like dune buggies bristling with laser cannon, machine guns, other weapons I did not understand, and hundreds of the robot tanks whose power I knew all too well.
Heavy freight helicopters were shown unloading engineering troops and equipment at oil fields, huge C-5s and 747s landed at the main airport with engineers, trucks, robot tanks, artillery pieces of every sort, all of it watched over by Falcons and helicopter gunships.
We watched the deployment for hours, as the troops spread out through Kuwait City, as war vehicles took to the roads, as American engineers began erecting the laser fences and gas dispensers around oil fields and pumping stations, as more and more planes and helicopters landed, as American troops secured the port and their ships pulled up to the quays.
Moustapha turned down the CNN commentary and offered me enthralled commentary of his own.
“They call that body armor Superman Suits, flexible composite as light as underwear impenetrable to bullets even at close range that hardens against them and spreads out the impact shock…look, there are rail guns on some of those buggies like the big artillery pieces they’re unloading…”
CNN showed large hovering things like giant metal crabs ringed by gunports gliding through the streets on cushions of air, tiny robot helicopters circling buildings, armored personnel carriers occupying main intersections, squadrons of buggies skipping over desert sands.…
“Thanks be to Allah.…” Moustapha muttered.
“You thank Allah for this?” I exclaimed in astonished outrage.
“It’s that or thank the Americans for just toying with us here,” he told me. He shook his head in wonderment or more likely envy. “As a Nigerian, I am grateful that we were spared an invasion like this, for as a general, I know that any army in the world that opposed a serious American attack would not last a week. If you care anything at all about the Caliphate, Osama, pray to Allah that their generals or your Caliph himself are not fool enough to try.”
“You admire the American military?”
“As a leopard watching safely from afar admires the strength of a pride of lions chasing a cape buffalo, glad that it’s not after him.”
As for me it was like watching the Pit of Hell opened wide and spewing forth the armies of Satan onto the battlefield of Armageddon. It would not have surprised me to see horned demons, snarling djins, flame-breathing dragons, emerging from the ships and cargo planes, nor would it have dismayed me more.
Like the forces of Satan marshalling for that Final Battle? What was to come surely would be Armageddon, and these devices of the American, were they to be thrown against the armies of Satan, would demolish them in an afternoon with only minor casualties of their own. There on the television screen I beheld the awesome power of the greatest evil the world had ever known proudly displaying itself in the heartland of Islam like a holiday parade from Hell.
And yet…
At first the inhabitants of Kuwait City huddled fearfully in the buildings as the American troo
ps moved through the empty streets. But then, as time passed with no troops opposing them, with not so much as a shot being fired, figures could be seen emerging, a few at first, and then more and more. And the CNN cameras moved in closer to reveal who they were.
They were small boys and young men watching the display of state of the art military might, not with approval exactly, and not without fear, but with wide-eyed wonder.
And then I understood what Moustapha was feeling now. For what was a general but such a boy grown to manhood? I had once been such a boy myself, had I not? And like the General I could not help but feel what he felt before such an ultimate display of the world’s greatest collection of soldierly toys.
For may Allah forgive me, as that boy still lived within General Moustapha, so did he live within me too.
* * * *
After less than two weeks of breathless events that seemed to have brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, a jihad between the might of the Great Satan and the honor of Islam itself, there arrived nearly three tense weeks during which nothing seemed to happen.
The Americans secured the oil fields and facilities with automated defenses as they had in Biafra, but they also deployed a further defensive ring of human troops and anti-aircraft missile batteries and maintained Falcon and Wasp patrols over them night and day. They brought up rail guns, artillery, and the large robot hovercraft tanks CNN indeed called “Crabs” all along the border with the Caliphate. Their missile cruisers and aircraft carriers stood right off the coast. Bombers from Diego Garcia appeared over Kuwait from time to time as reminders that they were in easy range.
The Caliphate moved divisions of tanks to the border but dug them into defensive positions, with artillery and motorized infantry well behind them. Caliphate fighter-bombers showed themselves frequently but well away from Kuwaiti air space.
It was a stand-off, as General Moustapha explained to me. The Americans displayed no intention to invade the Caliphate and the Caliphate, despite the previous brave words of the Caliph, made no move to retake the province.
“The Americans pledged no nuclear first strike because they can afford to,” he told me. “They could destroy everything the Caliphate has without using nuclear weapons. If the Caliphate uses its own against the Americans, they would bring down an American nuclear response on their own population centers. The Caliph and the Caliphate Council can rant all they like, but their generals know that to try to cross the border would be suicide.”
When I asked him what he thought would happen next, he told me he had no idea.
The Caliphate called for a United Nations resolution ordering an American withdrawal. The United States vetoed it in the Security Council. It passed the General Assembly by a near unanimous vote but the Americans ignored it. Mullahs and imams within the Caliphate and beyond issued fatwas demanding military action. The Caliphate ignored them.
Mass demonstrations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Kurdistan, and other countries with Islamic populations safely far from the potential battlefield likewise demanded military action, and denounced the Caliphate Council and the Caliph himself as cowards for failing to provide it. There were calls in Morocco, Egypt, and Syria for those provinces to secede from the Caliphate if it was not forthcoming.
While the world waited tensely, I and the remnants of my Ski Mask Jihadis waited eagerly, for if war broke out between the Caliphate and the Great Satan, it would be the final Jihad for the fate of Islam itself that would restore the lost meaning to our lives.
The idleness, the lack of significant change in the situation left me with nothing else to do but watch television for news of the commencement of combat that never came, a void that could only be filled with contemplation or prayer, and prayer was my only refuge from the single terrible thought that I could not otherwise even for an hour banish from my mind.
What if there was no Allah?
What if there was no God at all, not the God of Islam, not the God of the Christians, not the God of the Jews? What if all such belief was illusion, and there was no All-Powerful and perfectly good Creator and Protector to ensure that right and justice would prevail against the evil so manifest in the world of men? No divine retribution against that evil. No divine justice for the Faithful. No Paradise. Only the Hell that men made of the world.
I had heard it had been said that Hell was the absence of God. And from the evidence before me, my betrayal and that of the beurs by the Caliphate, the deeds that I had done in the belief I was serving the Will of Allah, and most of all the ruthless and cynical actions of America and how it now seemed they would allow that Great Satan to prevail as the ruler of a world deprived of justice by the power of military might alone, I found it impossible not to believe, no matter how hard I tried, that the Earth was that Hell.
I had also heard that a cynical atheist had said that given the condition of the world, it was much easier to believe in Satan than in God. And mullahs, imams, priests, rabbis, and philosophers had always pondered the question of how evil could exist in a world watched over by an All-Powerful and Beneficent Creator without reaching any conclusion that satisfied either logic or the soul.
But if there was no Allah, no God at all, the question revealed itself as no conundrum at all, and those who believed this, rightly or wrongly, gained a worldly power even greater than overwhelming military might, for such lack of belief freed them to follow nothing but their own selfish will and greedy desires.
I had also heard that a forthright worshipper of Satan had declared that do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. And it seemed to me that this was the power behind the irresistible force that was America.
For if Hell was the absence of God, then there need be no devil created by Allah to bring it about when men were free to create that Satan themselves. When they became that Satan by choice of their own will. And that was the Greatest Satan possible, the Satan that men like the Americans made of themselves.
I prayed and prayed to Allah, if there was one, to banish this horror from my soul, to prove His existence to me by deed, by granting the Caliphate the courage to begin the Jihad, victory in which against otherwise impossible odds, would restore His justice to the world and belief to my soul. And I swore an oath upon His Name, with my hand on the Koran, that if He answered that prayer, I would fight in that Holy War until that victory or my death.
I was praying outside the psychological warfare corps headquarters when General Moustapha, trailed by a dozen of his officers, approached at a dead run.
“The war has started!” the General shouted.
“What happened?”
“No one seems to know. A Caliphate unit crossed the border. Or fired across it. Or the Americans did one or the other. It doesn’t matter now. It’s war! And it’s already a slaughter!”
We all dashed inside and crowded around the television receivers which I habitually left on.
What was being shown was fragmentary chaos, but taken together the pictures made the terrible meaning all too clear.
CNN was the only network that had camera coverage of the American forces. Artillery pieces firing barrage after barrage of explosive shells. Rail-guns firing continuous flows of tiny high-speed projectiles, furious thunderstorms of metal raindrops moving so rapidly that they seemed firehose streams of solid metal. Vultures and swarms of Falcons flying to the west. Ships launching cruise missiles. Caliphate tanks exploding into fireballs in the distance or torn to metal shards. Clouds of Wasps sweeping Caliphate planes from the skies. Scores upon scores of huge explosions in the far distance. Formations of robot tanks sweeping forward.
Caliphate Television either could not hide what was happening on the other side of the border or did not try and Al Jazeera and United Nigerian Television were carrying its images, made all the more horrible by the jiggling and jolting of the cameras, the chaotic cutting from one scene to the next, the sudden blankings of the s
creens, the roars of the explosions, the continuous supersonic shrieking of rail gun fusillades rending metal, mixed with the cries of dead and dying troops, reporters, and cameramen.
The disjointed chaos of the coverage conveyed all too well the horror of the battle, the awful one-sided slaughter. The Caliphate Television crews sought out pictures of Caliphate tanks firing back, moving forward, of artillery pieces in their rear bombarding the Americans, of infantry troops pressing forward towards the front, of Caliphate fighters closing on the Vultures, and a succession of voices tried to report gallant resistance by the soldiers of Islam, but it was all worse than futile, dishearteningly pathetic.
For tanks and artillery exploded and were torn to pieces before the cameras in the act of firing, whole units of infantry suddenly disappeared leaving blank black screens and silence, Caliphate fighters fell from the sky, fireballs, clouds of black smoke, melting wreckage.
None of us spoke. None of looked at each other. At length General Moustapha turned off the prattling sound of the commentators and we watched the catastrophe unfold in silence.
* * * *
The one-sided battle lasted no longer than two hours. By the end of the first hour, whether by decision of the Caliphate authorities not to further dishearten its populace by showing any more of the disaster or simply because none of its crews were left alive, Caliphate Television was broadcasting the Faithful throngs praying in their mosques, leaving the airwaves to CNN as it showed the American advance, no doubt with triumphantly boastful commentary that we refused to hear.
Surely no army had ever charged a broken enemy in such a cowardly fashion, risking not a single soldier’s life in honorable battle. Formations of their robot tanks swept forward into what little was left of the dug-in front of Caliphate tanks, cutting down what crews remained to flee them. Scores of the robot Crabs floated serenely through the hordes of robot tanks and their victims. When they were among the infantry behind, they fired lasers and machine-guns in 360 degree circles, mowing men down as they advanced with deliberate speed like circular scythes reaping grain. Vultures rained down fuel-air bombs. High-flying bombers dropped loads of napalm canisters further to the rear.
Osama the Gun Page 33