(Wrath-04)-Breathless (2012)

by Chris Stewart

  “A perfect strike,” the president mumbled angrily to himself. “They have effectively taken down the entire government in less than a day.”

  No one said anything until the chairman of the Joint Chiefs announced, “The second group of fighters are launching.”

  The president turned back to the monitor to see another group of triangles lifting off from Hatzerim. “These are F-15E strike fighters,” the general told him. “They are the second wave. There will be many more.”

  The chairman held a laser pointer, which he flashed on the screen. “It looks like the first of the sorties are almost on target, sir.” He moved the pointer in a circle over the first group of fighters, continuing, “This group is heading to the Gaza Strip. They are eight or nine miles from their targets. That’s just more than a minute, sir.”

  Brighton stood and started pacing as he watched the aircraft attack. Grison moved toward him and stood at his side. But the two men didn’t speak, keeping their eyes on the screen. Brighton coughed anxiously, and then glanced as Grison turned and motioned to him.

  “This is it. They’re going to do it,” Grison whispered in his ear. “The Israelis are going to finish this. They’ll clean up in two weeks. Say good-bye to Hezbollah. Say good-bye to them all. They’ll take care of this problem. You know they’ll fight like madmen with their backs to the wall.”

  Brighton only nodded. He suddenly felt nauseated.

  He moved toward the screen, and then stood in silence. A deep, bitter darkness seemed to wash over him. His gut sank and his skin crawled up the back of his neck. He felt like crying. He felt like screaming in despair. He didn’t know why—it was confusing, utterly out of character for him to feel this way. He felt his knees start to buckle, and he had to take a step back.

  The blackness was so powerful it made it hard to breathe. It was as if the very jaws of hell were gaping open to him.

  Then he felt the darkest evil enter the room.

  Perdition. King of Evil. Prince of the mortal world. He had come to watch his battle, stalking into the room. He had come to claim his victory.

  Brighton felt him laughing, and he closed his eyes to pray.

  *******

  Lucifer stalked into the room, his great coat casting black shadows across the floor. Dark angels followed in hunching steps, their arms hanging loosely at their sides. They were so bent with hopelessness and anger they only looked half human, their eyes glowing with yellow light.

  Lucifer paced toward the general, hatred turning his lips into a frown. “Go ahead and pray!” he sneered in anger. “Beg for mercy from your God. But you know that He can’t help you! It is happening. It is over. And you are the one to blame. You and all of these around you! They share in the coming destruction, too. Your pride. Your vain ambition. Your desire to suffocate the world. Liberty is what you offered. But it is a prize they did not ask for, a prize they did not earn. Freedom is a prize they did not honor. You assumed that they were like you, but now you know that you were wrong!” Lucifer stopped and laughed. Was it a lie or a mere distortion? He didn’t care. He didn’t know. “And now comes the final battle,” he sneered again. “Now comes the final war. First the Jews, then your destruction! But all of you will die.”

  Lucifer stopped suddenly, his heavy brow burrowing into a scowl. He seemed to think, his eyes peering into the distance, as if he were looking at something that wasn’t there. His face turned passive. He shook his head.

  His expression was different now, as if he had learned a secret, something he hadn’t known before.

  He leaned toward the mortal that he hated. “All of you, General Brighton,” he emphasized his words. “All of you, General Brighton!” Lucifer wet his lips and smiled.

  FOURTEEN

  Jerusalem, Israel

  The lone dark spirit looked over the edge of a deep glen on the downhill side of the old wall that had once completely surrounded the great city of Jerusalem. He sat at the top of a rocky lip that jutted over the dell, looking on the steep bank that fell at his feet. The bottom of the dell was bowl-shaped, with jagged rocks jutting out from the parched, barren ground. Thorn bushes and needle grass clung to the gravel on the opposite side. A large rock, three feet high, with a flat top and smooth corners, protruded from the center of the dell.

  The spirit knew that the rock had been there for almost four thousand years. He knew that under the clinging grass growing up at its sides were the markings of ancient tools, as well as some faded names and symbols that were impossible to read, barely recognizable now as even being man-made. The rock also showed signs of ancient fires—its sides were blackened and the top smothered in soot that had been baked at such a temperature as to cook it into the stone.

  Balaam stared at the stone, remembering, smiling as he thought.

  Lucifer had enjoyed many playgrounds through all the dark years, but perhaps none was more special than this one.

  The Greeks had called it Gehenna. The Jews had called it the valley of Hinnom. Lucifer had called it Eesh-al-Guturr. All of them meant more or less the same thing: the “valley of fire” or the “valley of death.”

  Balaam knew that the ancient Christians and the Jews believed that the afterlife was divided in two. The good went to paradise. The evil went to a place the Greeks called Gehenna, which was named after this dell.

  Balaam thought back on the things he had witnessed in this place, the blood, the crying, the shattered lives and broken hearts. This was the place where the idolatrous Jews had sacrificed their children to Moloch, one of the ten thousand imitation gods Lucifer had created out of greed, lust, or fear. Sitting at the rim of the dell, Balaam relived a few of the happiest moments that he had witnessed here, letting the scenes play out in his mind: tiny babies, little children, dark-eyed boys, pretty girls. Why the ancient Jews had been willing to offer their youngest and most beautiful to some powerless god had always escaped him, but the mystery had also added to the excitement of watching them die. He pictured the raised knives, the flowing blood, the songs and the smoke. He pictured the mothers as they watched their own children sacrificed, their eyes painless but opaque, as if they had already cast the very lives from their souls. He pictured the fathers who had participated, along with their priests, holding the arms of their children as the long knives came down.

  He smiled again, a chill of happy memories slithering up his spine.

  Years later, the valley of Gehenna had been abandoned, and then avoided, then turned into a burning garbage pit. For hundreds of years, the citizens of Jerusalem had thrown in their trash, adding fuel to the fire that always smoldered in the dell, a stinking, smoky fire that burned their wet garbage and waste.

  What a fitting monument. The city had sacrificed their children, spilling their blood on the ground, then covered their remains with garbage and set fire to the place.

  Fire and smoke. Heartbreak and pain. This place was steeped in dark memories that could not be erased.

  Looking out on the little valley, he felt a swell in his chest. Would the good times come back? Almost certainly not. But the thing that was coming was even more grand—more compelling, more exciting, more intrusive and vast.

  He raised his eyes to the great city and smiled once again.

  The Arab fanatics who sought to destroy the Jews had a plan that would prove that Judaism was wrong. It was a simple plan, but brilliant, and, having contributed to its inception; Balaam couldn’t help but feel proud.

  For more than four thousand years the Jews had believed that their Messiah would come to them in this great city. They had staked their future, their religion, on that desperate belief.

  But Jehovah couldn’t appear to his children in Jerusalem if Jerusalem didn’t exist. If the city was destroyed, what would happen to their religion then? If the Islamists could destroy Jerusalem that would prove the Jewish prophecy was wrong, their core beliefs ridiculous, their faith utterly wasted on superstitions and lies. It would prove that Allah had prevailed.

&nb
sp; Destroy their city, destroy their religion. It was as simple as that.

  So Balaam looked out on the city in which he had spent so much time. He looked over the ancient buildings that he had watched the humans build. He looked over the temple, the mosques and the old city wall. He looked over it all, and then bid it good-bye.

  Soon, the second sun would appear.

  Weasel Four-One, Over the Gaza Strip

  The Israeli pilot banked his aircraft to follow his lead. Their target was a group of four cement-and-brick buildings on the city square in Rafah, one of the depressing and squalid shanty towns that dotted most of the Gaza Strip. The buildings had been used for many years as a headquarters facility for Hezbollah, and because Hezbollah had been one of the first to claim responsibility for killing the Israeli prime minister, the Israelis were returning the favor by making their headquarters one of the first facilities to be destroyed.

  The pilot went through his pre-bomb checklist for the third time, and then checked his targeting radar. The AN/AAQ-13 navigation and targeting pod combined a forward-looking infrared sensor with terrain-following radar to produce television images inside his cockpit, allowing him to fly at night as if it were day. The acquisition and targeting system maintained the white crosshairs on the southeast building, and then automatically slew to the left, confirming the coordinates for the southwest building as well before using the information to program the flight paths of the bombs. Cycling one last time, the computer confirmed the location of the southern buildings in the compound. His flight leader would take out the two buildings to the north. These two buildings were his.

  The pilot took a quick look to his right. Five seconds before, the third and fourth aircrafts of the formation had split off and were already out of sight, their aircraft’s deep gray skin melting into the darkness. They would hit their targets in the southern edge of Rafah; then they would rejoin the formation for the short flight back to base.

  The pilot nudged his sidearm controller, a barely perceptible movement of his right hand, and the fighter’s nose turned a little more than a single degree to the left.

  He was alert, but not anxious, and certainly not scared. This mission was easy, and he felt in complete control. Flying above the Palestinians’ anti-aircraft guns, and out of range of their feeble surface-to-air missiles, a group of old and poorly maintained Russian SA-2s and SA-3s that would have trouble targeting a 747 unless it was on fire, the pilot knew he was not in any real danger of being shot down. In addition, the target was easily identifiable—the computer would command the bomb run and automatically release the weapons at the exact dropping point. No, this mission wasn’t particularly challenging, but still, he was glad to be in the air. The big party had started. Let’s do it! he thought.

  Two minutes from the bomb release point, the pilot quickly glanced over his shoulder, checking the air behind him, and then turned forward again. He reached up and touched the instrument panel, gently stroking the jet. He loved the F-16 Fighting Falcon. It was a pure joy to fly. The bubble canopy gave him such an unobstructed view that it felt like he was riding on the tip of a spear. His seat reclined 30 degrees, and the fly-by-wire system provided the ability to exercise precise control of the aircraft during high G-force maneuvers. The warning system and countermeasure pods were exceptional at detecting and defeating airborne or surface electronic threats, and if everything else failed, the fiber-optic-towed decoy provided the aircraft with a final means of protection against modern radar-guided missiles.

  But of course, he wouldn’t see any of those threats tonight.

  Yes, an easy mission. Almost embarrassingly so.

  “Weasel Two,” the captain heard over his secure radio.

  “Go,” he shot back to his flight leader, speaking into the microphone in his oxygen mask.

  “Confirm lock on buildings three and four.”

  “Roger. Two is ready.”

  “You see the vehicles outside building one?”

  The pilot studied his air-to-ground mapping radar, which illuminated the target scene. He could see the headquarters complex, the vehicles, even the guards at the gate. His targeting crosshairs floated over building three. “Roger,” he replied after taking in the scene.

  The flight leader hesitated, and then called back again. “Does that look like a school bus in the corner?” he asked.

  The captain swallowed hard. He touched the pointer on his targeting radar, moving it fifty feet to the right. Then he saw it. A long vehicle. Could it really be a bus? He studied the image. It just wasn’t clear enough to know for certain, but this much he knew: it would follow with the terrorists’ rules of engagement to move a busload of children and park it at their headquarters in order to protect themselves. The captain swore in frustration, and then tightened the shot on his radar. The picture came in tighter but fuzzier and a little less clear. Then he saw the dual axles and a tractor on the back of the truck. He breathed a sigh of relief, pressing in his microphone switch. “Weasel, bogey looks to me to be a flatbed trailer. We’re still good to go.”

  His flight leader hesitated, and then came back again. “Roger that. I confirm. Fifty seconds to release.”

  “Two is ready.”

  “We are clear.”

  “Bombs in forty-five seconds now.”

  Washington, D.C.

  General Brighton stared silently at the monitor on the wall, watching the Israeli pilots fly toward their targets. There were only seconds to release point, and he swallowed painfully against the knot in his throat. Taking a step forward, he muttered under his breath. “No. Call them back. It’s not too late!” he said.

  The National Security Adviser turned toward him. “What did you say?” he asked.

  “Turn them back,” the general repeated, a look of dread on his face. But even as he said the words, he knew they didn’t make any sense.

  “Turn who back? What are you talking about? What do you want us to do?” Grison shot back.

  “Tell the Israeli pilots to turn around. This will be our last chance!”

  “Turn them back? Are you crazy? Why would we ever do that? Our last chance to do what? What are you talking about?”

  But it was too late, and Brighton knew it.

  He heard the guttural laughing again.

  Hezbollah Auxiliary Headquarters Building, Gaza Strip

  The man wasn’t Palestinian, he was a Saudi; in fact, there were no Palestinians anywhere to be seen. The complex had already been abandoned, their leaders having warned them that the Israelis would attack. It hadn’t taken a genius to know this headquarters building would certainly be one of the first casualties. So the complex had been emptied but for a few men standing guard outside the wall and on the narrow streets to the north.

  The Saudi sat alone in the corner, waiting for his death, which would come in an instant of fire and heat. He hunched in the corner, the electronic trigger sliding against his sweaty palm. He was mesmerized by the silver container that sat on a reinforced metal table in the middle of the room. He wanted to touch it, to feel it. He knew what was inside. He wanted to feel its heat, its power, and its magnificent strength. The Destroying Angel. The Prophet’s Horseman. The Tip of Allah’s Sword. It was their Avenger, their angel who had been sent to them from Allah. He started inching toward it, reaching out with his hand, then stopped and pulled back, suddenly afraid. Changing his mind, he scurried back to the corner and waited for death.

  While he waited, the hissing and bitter voices that seemed to fill every space in the room starting chanting, “Kill them! Kill them all! That is what you must do! You are good. You are righteous! This is the right thing to do!”

  He shook his head violently, and then rubbed his hands at his eyes. But the voices wouldn’t leave him. Indeed, they started screaming louder, the sound more shrill, and their chants more intense.

  Balaam stood with the other dark angels, forming a circle around the shivering man. They glared and bared their teeth to each other as they c
oncentrated their energy on the mortal who huddled in the corner.

  It might be he couldn’t do it. He might back out of the plan!

  They could see that he was weak and vulnerable. Even now, he could still reason. He could think! His judgment hadn’t been utterly clouded. He still understood right from wrong. What he was going to do was so evil; they could not give him time to think. So they kept up the constant noise and evil chants in his ears.

  Although they could discern his thoughts only from the look on his face, they saw the hesitation and uncertainty, the concern for his brothers and the children that he knew. They saw the soft light of goodness, and they worked in a panic to crush it out. It was critical now to keep their Enemy and His bright soldiers at bay. He would certainly try to stop them, and they could not lose this man.

  This was the moment they had been waiting for. This was the tipping point, the start of the Great War. So they had to keep this man panicked; they had to keep the hate and confusion in his head. They had to keep him from thinking of what he was about to do.

  So they hissed and they danced and they cried in the air. They swooped and leaned toward him, swearing and lying in his head.

  “Do it! It is good!” they lied in his ear. “It is right! God will reward you! Now go! Go and kill!”

  Weasel Four-One, Over the Gaza Strip

  The Israeli pilot had his head down in the cockpit, watching his targeting screen. The time-to-go display showed fifteen seconds to go. The crosshairs lay exactly over the targets. Altitude, twenty-four thousand feet. Airspeed, four-eighty. On time. On target. The time-to-go display now showed ten seconds to go.

  He glanced up and checked his leader, who was half a mile ahead and twenty degrees to his right. He looked down and flipped the master arm switch, giving the final release command to his bombs. Seconds later, he felt a sudden snap as the pins fired and the two bombs dropped away. His aircraft bobbed up from the sudden reduction in weight, and he pushed the nose down. He banked the jet up and jammed the throttle up to military power, then watched over his shoulder, keeping the target in sight. He wanted to see the two explosions before he turned back to base.