My hotel was close by and so I made my way there, no less frantically and rudely as anyone else. Caliphate Television was reporting that a man with a suitcase bomb had been seized just outside the outer perimeter of an oil field held by the Americans, nothing more save an idiotically futile call for calm.
I turned to Al Jazeera. According to their news bulletin, the bomber had been spotted by an American reconnaissance drone approaching across the desert, been captured alive by helicopter-borne American troops on Caliphate soil in disregard of the agreement, and was now being held by them, not the Caliphate authorities.
Why had the fools of Military Intelligence not issued us all cyanide capsules? Why had the fool not killed himself?
Why had I been such a fool not to think of it myself?
* * * *
I spend the rest of the afternoon huddled before the television set as the news got worse and worse. The Caliphate denounced the Americans for sending troops onto Caliphate territory during the Hadj. The Americans denounced the Caliphate authorities for failing to prevent the attempted bombing. The Caliphate demanded they turn over the prisoner. The Americans did not even respond.
Before sundown Al Jazeera reported a Pentagon announcement that examination of the bomb revealed that while it was a low-yield device, the explosive was highly-enriched military grade uranium yielding the maximum explosive power per weight and therefore must be a sophisticated military weapon.
Just after the sundown prayer, as if the Americans had held it back for maximum dramatic impact, they revealed that the bomb’s detonator was standard military hardware.
Caliphate military hardware.
Two hours later Al Jazeera, but not Caliphate Television, carried a press conference live from the Pentagon. The speaker was a four-star general in battle-fatigues, looking quite fatigued himself, and whether feigned or not, coldly infuriated.
“Under rigorous interrogation, the prisoner apprehended by Special Forces with the suitcase bomb has confessed that he is, or so he claims, was, an officer of Caliphate Military Intelligence—”
There was a babbling uproar of gesticulating reporters.
“There will be a short question period after this press briefing,” the general shouted over the tumult. “He has further admitted that the bomb was issued to him by Caliphate Military Intelligence,” he went on when it had died down.
There was an even greater uproar. This time the general simply stood silently scowling behind the podium, his face becoming grimmer and grimmer until it finally passed.
“This man, while acting independently on a tactical level, was a member of an elite unit of suicide bombers similarly equipped—”
“What does that mean?” someone called out.
“It means there are more suicide bombers with suitcase nukes out there!” the general roared angrily. “Now will you please let me continue this—”
But they wouldn’t, of course. Every reporter was shouting at once so that nothing coherent could possibly be heard. The general frowned, shrugged, sighed, and capitulated. Someone turned up the volume of his microphone, allowing him to be heard. “I will now take a few brief questions,” he shouted, “but only if you will shut up, behave in an orderly manner, and speak only when called upon.”
All the reporters raised their hands. He pointed at one at random.
“How many other bombs?”
“Ten or twelve.”
Another uproar. The general folded his arms across his chest and waited for silence before taking the next question.
“Do we know where they are?”
“We have no way of knowing. They could be anywhere. The members of the unit were ordered to disperse and choose their targets independently.”
“Have you identified any of the other bombers?”
“Not possible. They were all masked when the bombs were issued, apparently so that none of them could identify any of the others if captured.”
“Is there anything else you can tell us, general?”
“Only the identity of the unit commander, for all the good that will do us, or at least his nom de guerre,” the general said sourly. “The man we captured claimed that the men in his unit were at least led to believe that it was none other than Osama the Gun.”
* * * *
There was no further news of any consequence that night, but I could not keep myself away from the television set anyway, as no doubt most of the Caliphate and the rest of the world must have also been doing, though far fewer had probably fallen asleep before theirs and awoken before dawn with it still on as I did.
I did not even turn it off during the sunrise prayer, which I performed mechanically, unable to banish the thoughts of what had happened and the fear of what might come next from my mind.
Shortly afterward, a Caliphate Television news reader read an official government statement denying that any of its nuclear weapons had gone missing. Half an hour later, this was amended with a denial that the Caliphate had ever even possessed such terrorist weapons as suitcase bombs.
Al Jazeera repeated these statements without comment but reported angry mass demonstrations in American cities variously demanding a declaration of war against the Caliphate, a massive first nuclear strike, an invasion by American ground forces under threat of a nuclear first strike, the arrest of the Caliphate government and the imposition of American martial law over all of Arabia. The headquarters of the Caliphate mission to the United Nations had been stormed and ransacked. The American Congress had been called to an emergency session. An unconfirmed report had the American nuclear forces put on red alert. People were streaming out of the American cities into the countryside.
After the noon prayer, Caliphate Television broadcasted a self-contradictory statement to the effect that any such plot by its Military Intelligence arm as charged by the Americans could only be a rogue operation and a full investigation was already underway. It was claimed that such a treasonous terrorist plot during the Hadj, if it even existed, which it did not, was being denounced as blasphemy and apostasy from mosques all over the nation, though no footage of such denunciations was supplied.
Al Jazeera, though, contradicted the latter claim, reporting that there were demonstrations in front of many mosques supporting the suitcase bombers and Osama the Gun, though they had no footage either. They also reported unsubstantiated rumors that high Military Intelligence officers had either committed suicide or been arrested and shot.
As I sat before the television waiting for further news of any significance that was long in coming, it began to dawn on me that my own life was in immanent danger.
Military Intelligence, after all, had traced Osama the Gun to this very hotel room, and while the general who had given me the bomb in the closet, and whoever else in Military Intelligence was involved in the plot, would have no interest in thwarting it and might even be dead, I had no illusion about the ability of anyone taken alive with the knowledge of who I was and where I was to resist interrogation under ruthless enough torture. And the last thing the Caliphate government would want would be to produce a live Osama the Gun, or for that matter any of the men with the suitcase bombs, to contradict their denials.
I had to leave this hotel now.
I packed my few belongings and my Kalashnikov in my own suitcase and retrieved the one with the bomb from the closet. But before I could leave, I was transfixed by a further brief news report on Al Jazeera.
The American Congress had overwhelmingly passed a resolution empowering the President to declare war on the Caliphate and urging him to send in ground forces to occupy Arabia and impose martial law until all the suitcase bombs were recovered under threat of an all-out first nuclear strike if they were in any way impeded. Whether this was a formal declaration of war and an order to the president or just an authorization and a demand was left to the fearful imagination, for the president wo
uld speak within the hour and Al Jazeera would carry it live.
This seemed a hollow threat. What could the Americans really do? They would have to send in half a million ground troops to place all of Arabia under effective martial law let alone search the entire population, and it would take weeks or even months to deploy them, and this during the height of the Hadj, when any such attempt would surely ignite a mass popular uprising.
But the threat to me was all too real and immediate.
I checked out of the hotel and dashed up the street to find somewhere to watch the American president’s speech as quickly as I could lugging two suitcases, one of which was heavily laden with a critical mass of weapons-grade uranium.
There was a little tea-house on the next corner which I had once noted in passing had a television set. I paused outside for a moment, concerned at the attention that might be drawn to a man carrying such baggage, but I needn’t have worried. There were only about a dozen men inside, all but three of them wearing the ihram of hadjis, and they were all staring so fixedly at the television screen to the point where I probably could have entered with my Kalashnikov slung over my shoulder and not been noticed.
“The President of the United States, speaking from the Oval Office in Washington D.C.…”
The man looked as if he had not slept all night, as he probably hadn’t. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair was sloppily combed, his shirt and suit jacket disheveled, his tie on crooked, his beardless face badly shaven. His expression was grim, but with determination rather than fear, and his voice was firm with resolution. He seemed a man who had gone through many hours of contentious argument and perhaps even threat to his own authority, but who now was in control and knew it.
“Congress has declared a state of war between the United States and the Caliphate and authorized me to take whatever action I deem necessary to pursue it in my capacity as Commander in Chief, including the invasion and occupation of the Caliphate and the arrest and replacement of the present Caliphate government by martial law, and the full use of our tactical and strategic nuclear forces if necessary.…”
The only sound in the tea-house was a mass intake of breath like a great sigh run backwards.
“But a state of war is a legal authorization to wage war, not necessarily a mandate to use military force against the offending government immediately, and this I shall not do, at least for now.…”
This was greeted in the tea-house by a lesser true sigh of conditional and confused relief.
“This is the time of the Hadj for Muslims, their holy places are within the Caliphate, and the United States will respect the sanctity of the Hadj as long as it does not conflict with our vital national interest. And as a gesture of that respect, the United States will go further. In light of the Caliphate government’s demonstrated inability to maintain order while this sacred pilgrimage is taking place within its territory, and the loss of its control over its own nuclear arsenal, I hereby declare the United States the protector of the Hadj…”
“What?”
“The Great Satan protects the Hadj?”
“What is this man saying?”
“Quiet and let us hear it!”
“The United States will guard the Hadj under a complete and effective aerial umbrella. Our surveillance drones and satellites are fully capable of detecting any armed disturbance down to an individual level and any attempt to interfere with the peaceful conducting of the Hadj will be swiftly eliminated by our Falcon drone aircraft. The United States is not the enemy of Islam, and now we will prove it.”
But then the man’s voice, and his face as well, grew stern and threatening.
“Now I speak directly to the nuclear terrorists and anyone else who would inflict harm, death, or damage on the territory of the United States, or on its citizens or their property anywhere in the world. Do not mistake this merciful truce and protection for weakness. Do not make yourself an enemy of Islam. And that is what any Muslim anywhere in the world will be doing he if attempts an attack against American interests or citizens. I have already ordered our strategic forces to react automatically to any terrorist act. The safety and existence of your holiest shrines are now in your hands, jihadis, each and every one of you. You have been given fair warning.”
And he paused for a moment to drive his final words home.
“The immediate response will be the obliteration of Mecca by a moderate-yield nuclear warhead.”
* * * *
I left the turmoil in the tea-house for the far greater turmoil in the streets of Mecca. Meccans and hadjis poured into the streets, to the cafes and tea-houses and mosques, Meccans rushed in panic back into their dwellings, stood around in small groups arguing with each other, prayed where they stood. White rivers of hadjis in their ihrams flowed from every direction towards the Al-Haram Mosque, back to their hotels, out of the hotels lugging baggage.
What did all this mean? The Hadj had been promised protection by the greatest military power on Earth, but that same power threatened to destroy the very center of the Hadj, the holy city, the Ka’aba itself, the navel of the world, and at the whim of a handful of jihadis, each of whom might be anywhere, might commit some act of heroism or madness that could trigger that destruction at any moment.
And I was one of them. Like everyone else in this city suddenly trapped under the shadow of the mushroom pillar cloud, I was torn between courage and honor’s command to remain in Mecca as a gesture of defiance of the Great Satan and faithful solidarity with the Hadj, and fear’s demand to flee from impending nuclear doom.
But at least as far as I knew, I was the only one in the city carrying an atomic bomb in a suitcase, and I quickly realized that being apprehended with it in my possession just might itself be enough to doom the city. I had to get out, to lose myself somewhere, somehow, but where and how I had no idea.
Panic, some instinct, the Will of Allah, caused me to make my way through the tumult to Al Masjed Al-Haram Street, where the conflict between faith and terror was made manifest. Thousands of arriving hadjis streaming down it towards the minarets of the Al-Haram Mosque collided with a contrary torrent trying to make their way up the street to the monorail station, resulting in a shouting, shoving, foaming white rapid of humanity that remained stationary, going nowhere.
When I attempted to reach the monorail station by back streets, I found that these were blocked too, and what must be going on around the monorail station itself convinced me that leaving the city by that means was already impossible.
What I need was a vehicle. I had enough funds to rent one, but that would require presenting papers that would reveal my identity to a computer network, and now that the exodus was already underway, no vehicle would likely remain to be secured by such legal means.
The only thing for it was the means Kassim-Pierre had habitually employed in Paris. I had to steal a car.
Puffing and growing weak in the arms and knees from carrying my two suitcases, I made my way deep into a maze of back streets, where the crush thinned out and there were alleyways between small buildings where the occasional vehicle was parked, peering through windows to search for one with the key left in the ignition, testing doorlocks.
At length, I found a small delivery van, old and rusty, within a tiny deserted souk whose few fruit and vegetable stands had been overturned in the panic, and whose driver must have fled into the chaos, leaving the driver’s side door hanging open, and the key in the ignition.
I scrambled into the cab, threw my suitcases in the back amidst a few crates of assorted vegetables, started the engine, and drove off down the narrow street. I had not gone far when I saw an open-bed truck parked in an alley. I pulled up, rummaged around in the debris in the back of my van, found a pliers. I removed the license plates from my own van, and exchanged them for the ones on the truck.
It was unlikely that a stolen van would be reported to the police
in all this frenzy, less likely that they would concern themselves with such an act of common thievery under the circumstances, but with so much else in the hands of chance, I saw no good reason to eliminate what ill-chance I could.
* * * *
The major side streets were now clogged with cars and buses and trucks leaving the city and it took me two hours to make my way the few kilometers through smaller side streets to a highway leading up out of Mecca, leaning on the horn and gunning the engine all the way to push through the crowds of pedestrian traffic.
The highway itself was a continuous traffic jam reaching back down the on-ramp and into the approaching streets, and it took another half hour to join the creeping traffic on it; cars, trucks, buses, many of them hastily packed with belongings and even household furniture, a terrible disheartening scene to behold, to be trapped within, barely moving.
Yet while the opposite lanes were moving freely and the traffic was much lighter, my spirits were somewhat lifted to see the cars and buses and trucks filled with white-clad hadjis daring to make the journey from the tent city back to Mecca, back to the Al-Haram Mosque, back to the Ka’aba, to make their tawafs.
After I could not have gone more than a kilometer or two, I saw approaching from the eastern horizon tiny motes that from this distance appeared as a swarm of midges. Their engines could not be heard over the traffic noise, but I knew what they must be.
In a few minutes a wide formation of Falcons swooped low the across highway, returned and did it again, buzzing it to flaunt their presence, the roar of their engines all but drowned out by the frantic blaring of thousands of horns, the gunning of car engines, as if this might somehow dissolve the traffic jam to allow individual escape.
But the little robot jet fighters did not attack. After their second pass, the swarm of the evil things divided in two.
Osama the Gun Page 44