He finally caught himself, embarrassed at his show of emotion. He pushed himself up into a sitting position on the sand. It was dark. He was exhausted. The firefight and chase up the hill after the enemy soldiers had left him hot and breathless.
The three enemy soldiers lying above him were dead, he was certain of that, and it bothered him that, unlike U.S. soldiers, their bodies would lie there for days before someone came to claim them—if someone ever did. The air around him still smelled like burnt gunpowder, but he knew it was only the barrel of his gun. Looking down from the small bluff, he studied the desert below where, minutes before, the firefight had taken place.
The night was cool. Fall was coming on; even in the desert there was some relief. The wind blew up from the south, humid and biting with tiny bits of sand.
He was dressed in full battle gear: Kevlar helmet, goggles, flak jacket and vest, desert cammies, leather gloves and boots. His weapon, a short-barreled Mk.48 mod 0 gas-powered machine gun, was strapped loosely around him, and he had pushed it to his back. The barrel was warm, too warm to be accurate any longer (700 rounds a minute could scorch a barrel in short order), and he wished he had another barrel to change it out. But it probably didn’t matter—all the bad guys were gone or dead. The sky overhead was as bright and clear as only the remote desert sky could be. And it was quiet. Very quiet.
He turned and listened to the wind, then pulled out the tube for the flexible pack of water strapped to his back and took a long drink.
* * *
Bono walked toward him through the darkness, coming to a stop right in front of his man. “Looks like you got ’em,” the lieutenant said, nodding to the three dead men up the hill.
Sam grunted as he brushed the backs of his hands across his cheeks. Had Bono seen him crying, heard his childish sobs? He took a long draw of breath and shuddered in the dark.
Bono turned and sat down beside him. “You okay?” he asked.
Sam nodded slowly. “It’s all cool, man.”
“It’s okay,” Bono answered, putting his arm around Sam’s back. “It’s okay. You’re okay. No big thing. It comes and goes.”
Sam didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to say.
The two men sat in silence, the great desert all around them.
“Good work,” Bono said, nodding up the hill again. “I’m glad you got them.”
Sam drank again. “I don’t know, hearing the guy laughing as he ran away . . . something about it kind of snapped me.”
“Yeah. Makes you sick, some guy getting his kicks shooting another man in the face. But listen to me, Sergeant Brighton: If you ever take off like that again, you’ll be peeling potatoes and handing out bedsheets for the next twenty years. I will have discipline on my fire teams, you understand me! I don’t want any cowboys. You count on me. I count on you. That’s hard to do when you go ponying out after all the bad guys. You got that, my friend?”
Sam nodded and pulled his night-vision goggles down to cover his eyes.
The sound of the AirEvac chopper filled the darkness as it landed beside the dusty road. “Who got it?” Sam asked, remembering their men who’d been hit.
“Viskosky,” Bono answered.
“He going to be okay?”
“Tore his femur. Ripped the vein out. Lost a bathtub full of blood.”
“Anyone else?”
Bono was quiet and Sam braced himself.
“A couple other minor hits. Nothing serious.” He hesitated another moment. “Hastings was the guy who took it in the face,” he finally said.
Sam shook his head and swore.
Bono nodded toward the hilltop. “That last guy, ol’ smiley there, hid himself near the road. Shot Hastings from point-blank range right in the face.”
Sam nodded sadly. “I saw that,” he said. His emotions were under control now, pushed back deep inside him where it was all comfortable. “Viskosky be okay?” he asked.
Bono watched the chopper landing in the distance, its enormous rotors blowing up swirling vortices of sand in the landing lights. “He’s going to make it. But it hurt him.”
“I like him. He’s a good guy. I guess he’s going home.”
Bono grabbed a fistful of sand and let it sift through his fingers, then lifted his eyes and looked up at the sky. “We all are,” he announced. “They’re pulling us back.”
Sam didn’t answer for a moment. “No surprise there,” he finally said.
“Yeah, it’s been kind of strange, the past couple days. I mean, here we are, pretending nothing happened. A nuke goes off in Gaza. A nuke goes off in D.C. Half of Iran gets hit. Yet for the past week, we keep soldiering on as if nothing’s changed. Keep up our patrols, keep shooting at the bad guys, keep talking to the locals, trying to turn them into friends, when everyone knows it’s all heading south. Another fireball is coming, there’s no doubt about that. The U.S. can’t take a nuke on D.C. and not retaliate.”
Bono fell silent. The south wind kept blowing bits of sand against his face. “It’s going to get ugly,” he murmured, talking to himself more than to Sam.
The moon broke out behind a small band of high clouds, orangeish-red. Looking at it, Bono continued his observations. “Everything we do now is POF. Protection of Forces. Protect our own guys. That’s all anyone is even thinking about anymore. The locals are getting restless, and so are the troops. No one wants to state the obvious, but we all understand. Things are going to change. None of these people are our friends any longer. They know what’s coming, they just don’t know when or where. We move here, they move there, but none of it matters. Our mission here is over. We’ve got to get out before it all comes crashing down.”
Sam cleared his throat. “So now what?” he asked.
Bono shook his head sadly. “I don’t know where they’ll send us, but for a while we’re heading back to the States.”
Silence for a moment. “We’re going home?”
“Soon as we can get airlift and transportation.”
“What will we do then?”
“Wait and see, I guess.” Bono pulled his flexible tube from his chest strap and took a long drink, then stood up and extended a hand toward Sam. “Come on, Lieutenant. Let’s get back to our men.”
Sam huffed as he pulled himself up. “Hey, what’s this lieutenant thing? I work for a living, remember? You’re the only officer here.”
“Not anymore.”
Sam stopped and stared.
Bono stepped toward him. Even in the faint moonlight, Sam could see him smile. “Got word this afternoon. A battlefield commission. You are now Lieutenant Brighton. Congratulations, friend.”
“You’re kidding me,” Sam stammered.
“I wouldn’t kid you, brother.”
“But why? Out of all the guys, why me?”
Bono nodded up the hill toward the three dead insurgents. “It’s pretty obvious to me.”
Sam stared at Bono, his eyes growing suspicious. “You did this, right?”
Bono shook his head. “I didn’t do it because I like you. And you also need to know that it didn’t have anything to do with your father. You earned this, and we need you. It’s as simple as that.”
Sam didn’t answer.
“Listen to me, Sam. It’s important that you understand this. War is the great accelerator. It forces things to happen much more quickly than they otherwise would. It changes people, it changes nations, it changes everything.
“One of the things it changes is the opportunities that come in our lives. This is just one of many changes you are going to experience. Lots more is going to happen. We’re just getting started, I’m afraid.
“So keep the faith and be a leader. That’s your only purpose now.”
Chapter Eight
Royal Palace
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
The enormous palace outside Riyadh was the primary headquarters of the royal House of Saud. It was a warlike fortress, intimidating, almost evil looking, thick-walled and strong, a str
ucture that provided an impenetrable bastion to the world and guaranteed there wouldn’t be any outside interference in the affairs of the most powerful family on earth. Tall and brown, a little darker than the desert that surrounded it, the castle-palace was situated just a few kilometers from the capital city. One of the few mud-walled fortresses still in existence, the Riyadh palace was a reminder of the caliphs’ greatest days. And it was clearly built for battle. Inverted-V-shaped slits were cut above tiny windows in the towers, and the walls were six feet thick. Though it was now surrounded by man-made lakes, green lawns, and a great garden that rivaled the finest in Europe, the palace was still imposing. One look was all it took to know that this was a place for business, a place of power, a place for taking care of the dirty work of the king.
Outside the palace, dozens of the royal children and grandchildren had gathered for a three-day celebration. Between the east wall and the garden, they watched a display of warrior riding and Arab games. Wahab tribesmen from the east pounded drums and chanted in rhythm as veiled dancers swayed to the heart-quickening beat. The soldiers raised their curved swords while the children interlocked their arms and sang:
Allah loves His Prophet
Allah loves His Home
Praise to the King who loves the Prophet
Praise to the land that guards The Stone
Great King, we will defend you
Even as you defend the Prophet’s home
Horsemen spurred their animals viciously through the trees, each of them carrying a flowing silk banner and raising a sword to reenact the charge of the fanatical Ikhwan holy warriors who had swept through Arabia to unite the individual tribes into the kingdom of the Saud. At one time, the Ikhwan were the most fearsome warriors on earth. Zealous, bloodthirsty, fanatical believers in Wahhabi Islam, the Ikhwan were the key to the royal family’s early power.
The children watched the fearsome riders with delight. They danced and ate and laughed among the gardens, oblivious to the fact that the world was shifting right under their feet. For two hundred years the royal family of the House of Saud had ruled Arabia with obscene wealth and unchallenged power. But now that the father-king was dead, and his son King Abdullah had stepped into his place, the world was becoming a far more dangerous place.
Especially for these pampered young ones whose fathers had gathered behind the palace walls.
The next generation of royal children would bear the sins of their fathers.
And those fathers who wouldn’t sin were just a few hours from death.
* * *
There were hundreds of lesser princes—sons of concubines, cousins, nephews, and such—scattered throughout the kingdom, but the eight most powerful princes had gathered in the palace Great Hall. Among the assembled men were the Minister of Defense, Minister of Intelligence, Minister of Government Affairs—the assembled princes ran virtually every element of Saudi life. Most of them were middle-aged, a few were older, none of them were younger than thirty-five. All wore the traditional bisht, a thin black cloak trimmed with gold thread. As they waited for their king, they poured thimbles of bitter cardamom coffee from brass pots. The princes were not used to serving themselves, and a few of them grumbled, not knowing that all the servants had been barred from the palace, indeed from the entire palace grounds.
Pushing back their white robes and adjusting their checkered head cloths, they talked among themselves in conspiratorial tones. They had assembled, they thought, to map a way forward in the post-nuclear-detonation world.
And though they had been brought together for a reason, they were about to find out that it was not for what they thought.
* * *
In a small waiting room down the hallway from the great chamber, King Abdullah al-Rahman whispered back and forth with the old man.
The old man’s hair was white and long and thin, and it fell in a straggle off to the side of his head. His skin was blotched and wrinkled, but his eyes—those fearsome eyes—still burned like coals of red heat. They showed no real warmth or emotion—they didn’t even seem human anymore—but they were hot with rage and the constant burning that emitted from his soul.
“You are ready?” the old man demanded of the new king.
The younger man nodded grimly. He did not appear excited or in high spirits. Though what he was about to do would consolidate his power beyond that of any single man on earth, he realized it wasn’t that he was elevating his power so much as pulling all rivals down. But he also knew that didn’t matter. The end result would be the same: He would stand atop the pile. Yes, the pile would be made of rubble, but he would stand atop it all the same.
The old man watched and then nodded, reading the passive look on Abdullah’s face, knowing the king was beyond feeling now. Ironic, he thought, how the deadening of guilt seemed to kill the whole soul, robbing it of the ability to feel joy as well.
He leaned toward the king, searching for any signs of hesitation. “You will do this?” he demanded.
“I swear that I will.”
“You swear it on our oath?”
“I swear it on my blood. The blood of my father. The blood of us all.”
The old man gestured toward the chamber where the king’s younger brothers were waiting. “You swear it on their blood!”
The king didn’t hesitate. Instead, he moved toward the old man and took him in his arms. Locking his hands behind the old man’s back, he squeezed tight, whispering the cold oaths in his ear.
The old man listened, then stepped back. Staring at the king, he pressed his dry lips in a cynical smile.
The king thought he understood all of the oaths that he had breathed. But the truth was, he didn’t. He hardly understood them at all. He was nothing but a mortal; he could never really know.
But the old man knew. He knew how important it was to hide their counsels from the light. He knew how much the darkness was needed for their work. He knew that the source of the oaths stretched beyond the boundaries of time.
King Abdullah was not the first to share in the oaths and he would not be the last, but like all of the others who had known them, he had an exaggerated expectation of the part he would play. Yes, he was important, but how crucial could one manreally be? Like all of the others, he would play his part and then fall away, his body placed in the ground to mold into rot.
Fools! the old man thought in disgust. Arrogant, suffering, self-important fools! They actually thought that they mattered. Short-sighted, condemned fools!
The old man hid his disgust behind a blank face as he studied the king. Was he worthy? Was he ready? Yes, he thought he was. How many of his family had he already killed? His father. His older brother. His brother’s children and wives. All of them were dead now . . .
No, that was not right. There was one, a young child, who had escaped.
But they would find him. They had to find him. And they would kill him when they did.
* * *
The old man looked at his pupil and smiled.
The king had proven worthy. It was time to spread the cult. He patted the young king on his shoulder. “You know what to do,” he said.
The king swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing against his tight throat.
The old man leaned toward him, his breath as dry as death. “The final attack, the most powerful devastation, is just a few hours away. You absolutely have to do this before your brothers find out what you’ve done. Some of them will help you. Some of them are likeyou. Go. Find out which of them are going to join you. Then take care of the rest.”
The king frowned and started walking toward his brothers down the hall. He tried to keep his step up, but his feet still seemed to drag. He felt so empty and lonely, so frustrated and cold. He wanted to get it over with. He was growing weary of this war.
The old man watched, reading the look on his face. He called out, “King Abdullah.”
The king stopped and turned around.
“After this thing against America, you kno
w the next step, don’t you?”
The king stared, his face blank.
“Your filthy half-brothers, all those Shia, they will have to be put in their place. Claiming the authority of Allah when we all know that Ali, their first leader, was a filthy liar and nothing more. They’ve become chaotic and impossible, a pock upon you all. Your job won’t be over until we’ve taken care of them as well.”
The king took a step back. Yes, it was true he hated the Shia; he’d hated them since he was just a child. Every Sunni hated Shia. Ahl al bayt.“People of the house [of the prophet]” was their claim. How insulting! How absurd! All of them were liars and imposters.
But they were also Muslim brothers!
His heart sank again.
“How far . . . how long will this go on?” he muttered desperately, the hopeless thought escaping his lips before he could call the words back.
The old man considered the question, then smiled a wicked grin. “All the way,” he answered softly. “All the way until the end.”
Chapter Nine
East Side, Chicago, Illinois
They stood in the foyer on the first floor of the public housing building, a dreary high-rise identical to the four dozen other buildings around it. A blight on the city for more than three generations, the complex of poverty might have been the pride of some government bureaucrat back when it was built in 1960, but it was nothing but a fester of drugs and violence and criminal activity now.
In the lounge, half a dozen men spread out on a pair of stained couches, dropping heroin, playing cards, and calling filthy names to every girl who walked by. One of them tossed a knife, dropping it again and again on the floor, the curved tip sticking through the soiled carpet to the floorboard underneath. Another cleaned his gun, a Saturday Night Special with the serial number filed off and loaded with illegal armor-piercing bullets. A Chicago Housing Authority security officer stood near the front door. The men seemed to ignore him, and he ignored them as well. A long-standing agreement stood between them: He looked away; they cut him in on the action. Sometimes they paid in cash, sometimes in women.
Almost every night since the nuclear detonation in D.C., there had been riots in the ghetto, but the police had finally retaken control and the smell of pepper spray had begun to dissipate, though a faint whiff of smoke still drifted in the air. To the men’s right, one of the elevator doors was jammed open—it had been a long time since it had worked—and the other elevator door opened and closed with regularity as it moved the building’s occupants up and down.
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