The Caliphate

by André Le Gallo

  “I will—we will. Be patient. Do we want an incinerated city? Or do we want the Syrian leaders to hand over the country to our Muslim brothers? Would not that be a greater revenge?”

  Hussein felt himself stiffen.

  “The Assad family is the greatest obstacle to an Islamic Republic in Syria. The father Hafez, and the son Bashar, have killed thousands of our Muslim brothers. This is our chance. Don’t wait. How long do you think the Zionists are going to wait before they attack us?”

  “You are right about the Zionists. It’s time to remind the American Hastings that we have his daughter here.”

  ***

  Steve picked up the AK-47 and a flashlight.

  “I’m going to try to go out the back way. We can’t just wait here for Izem. We don’t know what he’s doing.”

  Kella got up and retrieved the other weapon.

  “Don’t think you’re leaving here without me.”

  “No, you’ll be safer here. I’ll come back to get you. Have you ever fired a gun, let alone an AK-47?”

  “No, I haven’t, so you’d better show me.”

  “Please. Stay here,” Steve begged. He didn’t want to worry about her, but even in the dim light he could see the determination on her face.

  “Give up. I’m going with you.”

  He sighed, picked up the hammer that was with the other tools in the desk, and nodded.

  “All right. Ready? First, about this gun. This is not an accurate weapon. It gets less accurate if you fire long bursts. Try to squeeze the trigger gently, don’t jerk it, and then release it quickly. Also, it’s going to kick and shoot up and to the right. You have to hold it. And don’t point it at anything you don’t intend to shoot dead. Ready? Wait for me by the door. Take a flashlight.”

  When Kella reached the door, Steve smashed all the circuit breakers. He then joined her at the door and they went to the supply room.

  “I want to shut down the emergency generator in case it’s programmed to go on if the circuit breakers fail.”

  But the generator was quiet. Steve led Kella back down the corridor now behind the beam of his flashlight. They turned right and took the first few steps when a voice called out behind them, “Ahmed!”

  ***

  Hastings’ secretary put al Khalil through right away. He was joined by Jack Horton who listened on a second phone.

  “Hastings,” al Khalil said, “your Jewish friends are on the verge of attacking us. They’ve been shooting at us and your daughter is lucky to be alive.”

  Hastings stood up and said with force, “I want to know about my daughter. I understand that you also have another American hostage. How are they both?”

  “Right now, they are fine. But if the Jews attack, either they will die from Jewish bullets or from ours. I guarantee that they will not survive a Jewish attack. Talk to your Jew friends. I want their commandos to disappear. Then we can talk about your daughter.”

  “I heard about you when I was posted to France. Your status as the only intellectual that could establish a dialogue with the West is badly eroded,” Hastings said, trying to reason with him. “I can help you regain your standing if you stop what you’re doing right now and let all your hostages go. Why are you doing this? I’m sure I could get you out of the country safely.”

  “Hastings, you are wasting my time with your demands. My next step will be to start killing the hostages. I have not decided who will go first, the Jewish scientists or my American prisoners. Get those commandos to move back!”

  Horton, the COS, wrote a quick note and handed it to him. Looking at the note, Hastings said, “I want proof that my daughter is alive.”

  “You are hardly in a position to give me orders, Hastings. But right now, I can’t bring her to the phone. She is in another part of the building. She is well.”

  Reading from another note, Hastings said, “I want you to take a photograph of her, and of Steve Church, with a cell phone, and I want you to email it to me within the next few minutes. If that happens, I’ll have the Israeli commandos back off. Keep in mind that my government is not in charge. Israel is a sovereign country.”

  He gave al Khalil an email address, which Tariq took grudgingly without agreeing to anything.

  ***

  After al Khalil had put him off by repeating, “Be patient,” Hussein walked away frustrated and angry. Al Khalil had been putting off Hussein for years. While his only reason to join Tariq in the first place had been to hit back at the Assad family, Hussein had never been successful in his attempts to influence Tariq into taking action against the Syrian rulers.

  Al Khalil’s last words to Hussein on the stairs were, “According to the scientists, there is a sliding roof to allow the laser gun to shoot. Get some men up there.”

  He went back upstairs and walked to one of the window openings being defended by one of his men.

  “Ayyub, take some men up to the roof. Part of it opens up. Find it and keep the Israelis off the roof.”

  Ayyub and three men went up through the damage done by the UAVs. Staying low to avoid being seen by the Israelis, they made their way to the wider part of the roof to the west.

  As they moved, Ayyub saw several black boxes. At first, he paid them no attention, not knowing if they were part of the roof construction. Then he stopped and lifted a box, revealing a wire going into the roof. He called one of the other men. They both examined the box.

  “I wonder if the Israelis put these up here to listen to us. What else could they be? Bombs? They look new, not weathered like the rest of the roof.”

  The second man was about to pull the wire, but Ayyub stopped him.

  “Not now. It would reveal we are up here,” he said.

  They resumed their inspection of the western part of the roof.

  At that moment a clinking noise was followed by a grappling hook on a nylon rope being pulled back toward the roof’s edge. Ayyub crawled closer to the edge and the three others started looking for other places where the Israelis might be trying to climb.

  Ayyub and his men waited for the commandoes to show themselves above the edge. Another hook and then a third hit the roof. Three men were on their way up. One climber’s head became visible, then the second and the third. It wasn’t until the third appeared that Ayyub and his men fired, killing all three instantly, their bodies falling to the ground below.

  Ayyub threw a grenade to the base of the wall, assuming there were others down there waiting their turn to climb. He paused a second and then looked over the edge. He barely had time to note with satisfaction the Israeli bodies at the base of the wall before his head exploded from a dum-dum bullet fired by a Shaldag sniper.

  Meanwhile, al Khalil sent one of his men to send photos of the American hostages to the ambassador. He remembered that both Kella and Steve had cell phones that had been taken from them.

  14:38

  Steve and Kella were on the second step of the unlit stairs, plastered against the wall at a right angle from the end of the corridor, listening to the footsteps coming toward them. The reflection from the beam of the man’s flashlight pointed at the floor in front of him was illuminating the wall with increasing brightness.

  The voice shouted again, “Ahmed!”

  Steve and Kella looked to their right up the dark stairs. Steve wondered why the voice thought Ahmed was somewhere in front of him. Or, had he heard their footsteps and assumed that they were those of Ahmed?

  Steve’s mind was racing, trying to decide how to deal with the company, whether to simply kill him as quietly as possible, or capture him and tie him up. He had concluded they couldn’t deal with a prisoner when the man reached the end of the corridor and looked up the stairs.

  Steve had the shoulder stock of his AK-47 cocked and ready to smash him when Kella stopped him.

  “Wait!”

  At the same time, she stepped forward spoke Tamasheq rapidly while pointing her AK-47 at the man whose face was hidden by a Tuareg tagoulmoust.

&
nbsp; Steve had come within a millisecond of releasing his blow to the man’s head. He could see the man’s eyes wide with shock and surprise. Taking advantage of the element of surprise, Steve disarmed him and watched the dialogue, only guessing at what both were saying. After several exchanges, the man seemed to ask a question, to which Kella replied by showing him her bracelet and a few seconds later the tattooed design on her hand. The Tuareg paused a second and seemed swayed. Steve recognized Izem’s name in Kella next sentence and she appeared to have closed the deal.

  She turned to Steve and said, “He’s with us but he also wants confirmation from Izem.”

  “Tell him you want full allegiance now or his family will never live down the shame.”

  Kella looked at Steve with surprise and translated. The Tuareg looked at both Steve and Kella in turn and replied in Tamasheq. Kella said, “That did it.”

  “Well, I think I’ll keep his weapon for now,” Steve said. “Tell him we’re going upstairs to save the rest of his Tuareg brothers from annihilation. Ask him how the Salafists are positioned upstairs.”

  “He said there are about fifteen to twenty left, but some are downstairs watching the prisoners,” Kella said. “Upstairs, they’re fighting from the windows, and he said some are on the roof, but he doesn’t how many.”

  “Let’s go,” he said, moving up the stairs first. He stopped suddenly, turned around, and asked, “What’s his name?”

  “Yubba,” said the Tuareg.

  Kella and Steve both looked at him in surprise, and Steve led them up the stairs again.

  When they reached the door at the top, it was half open and hanging on one hinge, the doorframe a jagged hole.

  “Here we go, ready?”

  He looked back at Kella. She clutched her AK-47 more tightly to her side. His AK-47 up to his shoulder and finger on the trigger, Steve slipped through the door without having to touch it. Shouting voices erupted in what sounded to Steve like a loud conversation. He motioned Kella to his side.

  “What are they saying?”

  “They want the lights back on.”

  Although it was midday, light from the outside didn’t penetrate very far beyond the few windows. The three of them had emerged in another office. Yubba motioned to follow him. He opened the door slowly to reveal an external wall on the left. One of Hussein’s men was standing on a desk he apparently had placed there and was pointing his gun out a window that was about ten feet off the floor.

  While his gun still pointed toward possible targets outside, his eyes followed the door’s movement on his left. He quickly tried to move his gun into firing position when he saw Steve appear behind Yubba. But Steve already had his AK-47 pointed toward him. He fired and four 7.62-millimeter caliber bullets penetrated the Salafist’s chest. The almost-simultaneous blows hammered him against the wall. He fell off the desk to the floor.

  Steve’s mind registered that he had killed another human being. But his dominant feeling was that of great danger. The man he had shot could easily have killed them both.

  He pulled Kella after him, moving to the right, paralleling the side toward which the Salafist had been pointing his gun. Now the other gunmen were alerted. They would assume a breach by the Israelis.

  “Hurry,” he said.

  They moved out quickly and kneeled at an intersection of two corridors formed by seven-foot-high dividers. He told Kella, “Call to the Tuaregs in Tamasheq. Tell them who we are.”

  Kella shouted, “Izem and all of you other Udalan fighters. Now is the time to revolt against the Arab master, the poisoners of wells. Kill them now. Do not die for somebody else’s cause. Stay with the Arabs and die. Join me and choose freedom. I will get you out of here alive.”

  They waited in silence. Steve said, “Repeat your message, and then let’s move quickly.”

  Before she could say anything, Yubba shouted it out.

  Steve heard footsteps and voices in front of them, so he pulled Kella into the first office cubicle, where they kneeled awkwardly behind a desk. The footsteps drew closer.

  They saw Izem go past their hiding place running in a crouch. In a loud whisper, Kella called out in Tamasheq, “Izem, in here.” In a few seconds Izem joined them.

  Suddenly a loud Arab voice from farther down the corridor shouted, “This is Majid. The hostages escaped. Al Khalil is insane with rage. The hostages are our ticket out of here. They must be up here. Boulos! Gamal! Join me at the top of the stairs and help me find them!”

  “Now I know where they are,” Izem said. “Stay here. The stairs are very close.”

  He pointed with the muzzle of his gun. He took the AK-47 from Steve and gave it back to Yubba. He and Yubba headed in Majid’s direction.

  They heard voices and footsteps. Then gunfire erupted, stopped for a fraction of a second, and erupted again. The sound was badly absorbed and resounded throughout the warehouse building. It also sounded extremely close. Kella looked at Steve. He stood up in a crouch and moved out of the cubicle, with his AK-47 out front.

  ***

  Al Khalil was downstairs in his de facto office. He held Abdul, who was kneeling in front of him, by the hair. “How long have you been a CIA spy?”

  “Never, never! May Allah curse me if I lie! Izem came to help the hostages. It’s the Tuaregs. They are all spies. They are all infidels. They only made believe they are Muslim warriors. Izem liberated the Americans, not me. I could do nothing.”

  Al Khalil pointed a pistol at Abdul’s face.

  “You lie. You and Izem worked together, didn’t you?”

  Abdul held is hands, palms up, toward al Khalil.

  “No, no!”

  Still holding Abdul by the hair, al Khalil moved the muzzle of the pistol closer and closer to the man’s right eye, his finger tightened on the trigger. In desperation, Abdul grabbed the gun. The gun went off as he tried to push it aside. The bullet punched him in the neck. Al Khalil released his hair and Abdul fell forward. He looked at him a second before firing another shot into the back of his head.

  ***

  Izem and Yubba appeared in front of Steve. Izem said, “Majid, Boulos, and Gamal are gone to their Paradise.”

  Then he called his Tuareg brethren in Tamasheq. Within five minutes, after some gunfire, during which Kella kept a firm hold on Steve’s arm, three men appeared. They spoke with Izem.

  “We just lost one of ours. Hussein and several men are on the roof, and there are the men guarding the scientists, and al Khalil’s guards, about fifteen-to-twenty fighters.”

  There was another conversation among the Tuaregs, which Kella translated for Steve.

  “The Israelis have a secret weapon downstairs. With it, al Khalil is going to first threaten the Muslim world with a warning shot against two cities, and then, unless all submit, he plans to obliterate the population of some Arab capitals.”

  Steve took a deep, steadying breath.

  “Let’s go downstairs. We have to stop him.”

  ***

  As the Shaldag and Hussein’s men battled for control of the roof on the western side of the building, Habib and the Amitais switched the nuclear power piped in from the Soreq Nuclear Center, from the commercial grid, providing electricity to surrounding towns, to exclusive military use of the center. The energy coursed to three lasers hooked up in series, using a triple-lens system. The system was designed to produce a laser beam with the effective power of a fifty-four-megawatt beam.

  The roof was open less than a minute when Habib sent the beam to the satellite. It was received by one giant mirror, fed into the satellite, and shot out through another mirror toward Algiers.

  During a full minute, the beam bathed the area from the Place du Gouvernment and its complex of ministry offices on Rue du Docteur Cherif Saadane, past the railroad line along the coast, to the docks and overlapping onto the sea. Electric power in that part of the city came to a stop. All communications shut down. The explosions of war were absent.

  People on the street became i
nstantly aware of increased heat on their exposed skin. Those wearing long sleeves or jellabas felt the sensation on their faces and hands. They searched for a cause but saw nothing to explain their quickly rising body temperature. They initially assumed that the heat was the prologue to the sirocco, the wind from the desert. But in seconds they dismissed natural causes. Their skin quickly turned pink and then red. Blisters followed, and the temperature of their blood and other bodily fluids began to climb to dangerous levels.

  The lobby of the Es Safir Hotel, located between Place du Gouvernment and the sea, as well as most public buildings in the area, quickly filled up with people looking for air conditioning. The instinct to move inside saved many lives.

  Some who lived or worked in apartments or offices on the top floors of buildings died from the superheated air. Fires erupted spontaneously. Any easily combustible material within the half-mile diameter of the laser burst into flames. Some drivers lost control of their vehicles and crashed. In three minutes, within the fifth-of-a-square-mile area, all was quiet. Later, fire trucks from other parts of the city started their sirens and headed for the blighted zone.

  Within an hour, a French correspondent in Algiers called his report into his Paris office.

  At 14:30 today, the threat that al Khalil, the Salafist leader whose spokesman in Cairo delivered an ultimatum to the Muslim world to submit to Sharia law, materialized as a death beam from space. Casualties were minimal considering the apparent potential of the weapon—officials initially estimated one-hundred people, but a check of hospital reveals a somewhat lower number. But, as a military strike intended to annihilate the enemy’s physical infrastructure, al Khalil’s attack was a failure. Physical damage was minimal. We are waiting for an official statement from the Algerian Government. However, judging from the population’s reaction, placed in the context of al Khalil’s threat communicated at the press conference in Cairo, the death beam has had a psychologically devastating effect. Waiting for the promised ‘second strike,’ which al Khalil said would be much more lethal, I am Jean Pierre Lemoine reporting from Algiers.