Complete Independence Day Omnibus, The

by Molstad, Stephen

  Remarkably, Thomson had left his phrase book at the camp. “What did you say?” he asked.

  “I said not to worry about Yossi. He’s our lawyer.”

  One of the radio operators pointed at the machine gun the Israeli soldier held and cracked a joke of his own, which Khalid translated: “Yes, and I see he remembered to bring his fountain pen!” When the men had had their laugh, they began turning back to their workstations.

  “Now,” Reg asked, “where’s this Morse code?”

  Khalid led the way to the center of the tent, where the camp’s best radio was being monitored by a trio of technicians. They were all listening intently, scratching out notes on pads of paper. By their expressions, Reg could tell they were frustrated. One of them slipped off his headphones and handed them over to Reg.

  He put them on, expecting to hear a sequence of dots and dashes. Instead, there was a roar of static. It seemed to be nothing but a storm of interference noise, but then he heard it: a faint voice shouting through the blizzard. Reg closed his eyes and tried to make out what the voice was saying… States government has captured… shield we will… alien mother ship outside… do not engage… forces happy… The voice belonged to an American man who was speaking in an urgent but controlled tone. It seemed impossible to piece together the fragments of what he was saying.

  If this broadcast is coming from America, thought Reg, there’s no telling how many times it’s been relayed, boosted, and amplified before it reached the Empty Quarter. “Can’t make it out,” Reg said to the operator sitting next to him. “It’s just so much sonic mush.” He began to remove his headphones, but the Saudi motioned for him to keep listening.

  “Wait,” said the man. “You will hear.”

  He was right. A few seconds after the voice transmission was finished, a Morse sequence began. This, too, was faint, frequently interrupted, and barely audible. Reg quickly realized the spoken message was being repeated in this different form. He grabbed a pad and pencil and began writing, decoding as he went. The brief message was continuously recycling itself, and, after ten minutes, Reg had as much of it as he thought he could gather.

  Everyone in the tent waited anxiously as Reg compared his own notes to those taken by the other men. Like a person solving a crossword puzzle, he fit the pieces together fragment by fragment. When he was finished, he read it over a couple of times and couldn’t help but smile. When he stood up from the table, every pilot in the immediate vicinity rushed up to hear the news.

  “It’s from the Americans,” he announced. “They want to organize a counteroffensive.” A guarded cheer went through the crowd.

  “It’s about bloody time,” Thomson harrumphed. “What’s their plan?”

  “It’s… well, it’s damn creative.”

  “Read it!” several men demanded. Soldiers and civilians were streaming in from all directions.

  Reg cleared his throat. “It says: ‘To any and all remaining armies of the world. The U.S. military has captured one of the alien attack ships, has learned to circumvent and disable its protective shield. We will attempt to disable all shields worldwide. Preparing now to infiltrate alien mother ship outside Earth’s atmosphere and use computer interface to temporarily disable source of shields. If successful, we anticipate only a small window of opportunity. Please commit all possible military resources to worldwide synchronized attack to begin at approximately 03:15 GMT. We will announce success or failure of our mission at that time. Conserve your weaponry. Do not engage enemy. Accept civilian losses. This action authorized by U.S. President Thomas Whitmore. Continue to monitor this frequency. Relay message to other forces in your area. Happy Independence Day.”

  As one of the radio operators repeated the message in Arabic, the tent and surrounding area filled with murmured discussions. Reg looked down at the paper in his own hand. The word harebrained went through his head, followed closely by impossible.

  But then again, at least it’s a plan, he thought. And who knows? The Americans have surprised me before.

  After the initial flush of enthusiasm, questions and reservations about the plan started to crop up. How were the Americans going to get into the mother ship? How were our computers going to interface with the alien technology? How would anyone know when the shields were down, assuming they ever came down at all? “No, no!” protested one of Khalid’s men. “This is a bad plan, too much crazy.”

  But this man was in the minority. More and more of the pilots, both Saudi and international, began discussing how the group might work together to fulfill their role in it.

  Then, from the edge of the tent, a booming voice interrupted the gathering. “We Arabs are a proud people until our foreign masters tug on the leash,” said Commander Faisal, striding to the center of the group. “Then we forget our own obligations in an instant.” He was obviously displeased with the way some of his men were embracing the new plan. He shook an admonishing finger at them. “As soon as the Americans, the infidel Americans, speak, you turn into lapdogs! A few words over a radio, and you forget the Holy City!”

  Reg felt the energy and enthusiasm begin to drain from the group. The influence that Faisal had over his men could not be underestimated. He was a charismatic man, capable of rousing hearts and raising morale with a few well-chosen words.

  Somebody needs to choose the right words to turn this thing around, Reg thought. This American plan is madness, but it’s the only chance we’ve got. Reg looked at Thomson, considering whether the colonel would be able to turn the tide of opinion against Faisal.

  “I think someone’s trying to get your attention, Major,” Thomson said. Reg looked to where the colonel was pointing and saw a handful of Saudi woman. Piercing green eyes stared at him from behind the shrouding abaya of the tallest. It could only be Fadeela.

  Knowing that there was no way, in this public forum, that she would be able to speak to him, Reg watched as she slowly raised her arm and pointed directly at him.

  She’s thinking the same thing I am, Reg thought, and she wants me to talk to these men. But they despise me after last night!

  Fadeela lowered her arm, but continued to hold him in her gaze. He could see the questions in her eyes. What do you have worth fighting for? What do you believe in?

  Reg considered then that Fadeela Yamani might be the bravest person he had ever known. She lived her life as if walking a treacherous path, fraught with danger. Holding to the strictures of her society on the outside, internally she longed for a life of independence, of freedom of a sort no one in her position should ever hope to obtain. But she did not give up hope; she did not give up the fight.

  It’s her, Reg thought, simply. She’s worth fighting for. I believe in her.

  Reg saw a half-full water barrel immediately behind the spot where Faisal still stood, haranguing his men. He walked over to it and did something guaranteed to draw the rapt attention of every one of these desert-bred men. He turned it over.

  Faisal cursed and leapt away, narrowly avoiding muddying his highly polished boots. When he turned, Reg had already overturned the barrel and climbed atop it.

  Reg clutched the American message in his hand and held it above his head. “This plan,” he said in a loud voice, “may be the most foolhardy damned plan I’ve ever heard of. There’s no logic to it! It depends on a thousand variables and perfect timing among hundreds of units spread across the globe.” One of the Saudi soldiers started to approach, but Reg saw Faisal wave him off. He thinks I’m going to argue for doing nothing, thought Reg. Good.

  Reg caught the eye of the pilot who had disparaged the plan earlier. “‘Too much crazy,’ right? Risking all on a one-in-a-million chance that the Americans will accomplish what? That they’ll shut down the shields for a few moments at best! Their President Whitmore must think we’re crazy!” A few of the Saudis were nodding, but Reg saw that more of them were disappointed that he wasn’t arguing for the plan. I don’t want to be a disappointment, he thought, and continued speaking.
/>
  “Or maybe I should say that Whitmore must hope we’re crazy. The Americans must hope that we’ll join them. That is, after all, what they’re offering us. Hope. The first glimmer of hope we’ve had since the aliens destroyed Jerusalem.”

  “Hear, hear!” shouted Thomson. Several of the other pilots joined him in shouting encouragement.

  “We’re from different countries,” Reg continued. “We speak different languages. Two days ago some of our countries were openly hostile to one another. Do you remember? Do you remember two days ago? It seems like ten years, doesn’t it? Those old conflicts, those hostilities, they’re meaningless now. What’s important is what we have in common. What we have in common is the greatest enemy mankind has ever known. And now we have hope!” More of the men shouted approval, and Reg kept on.

  “We have hope that we can knock the invaders from the skies! We have hope that we can take back what is ours! We have hope, a real hope, of fighting a battle we can win!” They were his now, Reg saw. Every pilot within earshot was clapping and shouting, banging their hands against barrels like impromptu percussionists or simply jumping up and down. Every pilot except one.

  It’s one thing to convince them, thought Reg, staring at the grim visage of Ghalil ibn-Faisal, but another thing altogether to convince the man with the power. Again, Reg remembered what Fadeela had told him, that here was a man motivated solely by personal glory.

  “Or maybe,” Reg said, holding his hands up for silence, “maybe we should act prematurely. Maybe we should throw ourselves against the aliens before their shields are knocked down, guaranteeing that they will destroy us, and survive us. Maybe we should make a futile gesture instead of a genuine attack, and ensure the destruction of Mecca. And Riyadh. And Baghdad, and Addis Ababa, and every other place any of us hold dear.

  “Maybe it won’t come to that, though. Maybe some pilots from somewhere else in the world will be able to take out our assigned city destroyer after they’ve saved their own people. After all, just because we don’t fulfill our part of the bargain doesn’t mean that the other thirty-five ships won’t go down. Just the ship in the Middle East left. And why? Because when it finally counted the most, the people of the region couldn’t act together for the common good. When it finally mattered the most, the chance at the glory of victory wasn’t enough to make them see something bigger than their own problems.”

  “No!” shouted a voice from the crowd, and Reg saw that it was Yossi.

  “We can work together,” said another voice, a Syrian.

  “Can you?” asked Reg. “Can Muslims and Christians and Jews fight side by side?” The crowd roared, “Yes!”

  “Can Persians and Arabs and Europeans and Africans unite to rid the world of this horrible scourge?” And again they roared, “Yes!”

  Then Reg threw his own arms into the air, and shouted, “Victory!”

  The cheer spread through the whole camp in a heartbeat. “Victory! Victory! Victory!” The desert rang with the international chorus.

  Climbing down from his makeshift pulpit, Reg caught sight of Fadeela once again. Was it possible to notice a grin from behind an abaya? He thought so.

  “You are quite a speech maker, Major Cummins,” someone behind him said. It was Faisal, of course. “I can raise no objection to the American plan now. But it will have to be incorporated into my own, of course.” The Saudi commander held up a dispatch.

  “The alien ship has turned south, toward Mecca. We will fly to defend the Holy City, as planned. If the Americans have brought the shields down by the time we arrive, so much the better.” Faisal wadded up the paper and threw it in the sand at Reg’s feet.

  “In either case,” he continued, “once they pass the city of Usfan we will attack.”

  5

  COUNTERATTACK

  The main battle in the camp that afternoon was between debilitating heat and the determination of the pilots to prepare their planes for the showdown. The work required them to spend long stretches of time exposed to the punishing sun. They stripped parts off of the damaged jets in order to repair others, replenished their fuel tanks one bucket at a time, and jury-rigged missile firing systems to accommodate unfamiliar weaponry. There was little time to discuss strategy and tactics. As the sun leaned to the west and the men in the radio tent continued to track the city destroyer’s progress toward Mecca, the pilots went through their final checklists.

  At five-thirty the planes were lined up on the runway, ready to go. Nearly two hundred pilots climbed into their cockpits and fired up their engines. But Reg was still on the ground inspecting the Tornado that had been Thomson’s plane and stealing occasional glances toward the Saudi camp. Since Thomson was the least accomplished pilot among the Brits, he had volunteered to sit with the Saudi radio technicians to help decode the next message from the Americans. Sutton and Tye, already strapped in, were watching Reg, wondering what was taking him so long. A moment later they had their answer. From between the Saudi tents, a veiled woman emerged and marched purposefully onto the runway. Her black, ankle-length abaya moved in time with her long, athletic stride, and she carried something in her hand.

  Reg knew who it was. Like a smitten teenager, he’d delayed getting into his plane for as long as he could, hoping that she would find some way to see him off. He’d hoped that she would wave to him from between the tents, or send word through a messenger. But Fadeela was bolder than that. She walked directly up to him, ignoring the hundreds of people who were watching, and handed him a photograph. Reg caught a quick glimpse of her bright green eyes before she turned on her heels and walked away without a word.

  He looked down at the photograph. It showed a young girl—too young to wear a veil—riding a camel toward the finish line of a race. Her green eyes were turned toward the camera, and she was laughing triumphantly. He turned it over and read the words written on the back: “A kiss for luck.”

  A smile spread across Reg’s face as he tucked the photograph into his breast pocket. It’s almost as if she can read my mind, he said to himself as he climbed into the jet. It’s exactly what I needed. Something to remind me what I’m fighting for.

  They flew west, nearly two hundred strong, to the edge of the desert before turning due north. Eighty of the Saudi planes took the lead, flying in crisply formed wedges. They were followed by the international pilots, seventy-three of them, straggling along in ragtag fashion. Another Saudi squadron brought up the rear, prepared to hunt down any pilot who tried to run. They followed the Asir mountain chain up the country’s west coast. The terrain on the two sides of the mountains was starkly different. To the left, the hills were covered with trees all the way down to the lush coast of the Red Sea. To the right, rocky cliffs and canyons ran down to the lifeless floor of the Empty Quarter’s great sand desert. There was no sign of the enemy, but for the first time in years, Reg felt nervous being up in the air.

  As they approached Mecca, they looked down at an awesome spectacle. From all directions, the Islamic faithful were converging on the Holy City. For mile after mile, the highways were choked with traffic. Brightly painted buses, private cars, and rivers of people on foot were all surging toward the famous mosque.

  “Major Cummins,” Faisal’s voice came over the radio, “ahead you can see our Holy City. I think you are very fortunate to see this sight. Under normal circumstances, of course, only believers are allowed here. So today, I declare you and the others to be honorary Muslim pilgrims—hajjis.”

  “Allah inshallah, old bean,” Reg said, smiling.

  As they caught sight of Mecca’s great mosque, they saw that there was a sea of believers crushed into the immense courtyard. They were moving in slow circles around the cube-shaped Kaaba, the shrine that stood at the center of the open space. According to Muslim belief, this stone structure was originally build by the first man, Adam. As the planes roared past, many of the Arab and African pilots broke into the same ritual prayers being chanted by the faithful below: Lord God, from such a dis
tant land I have come unto Thee… grant me shelter under Thy throne.

  Several minutes north of Mecca, Faisal’s voice returned to the airwaves and called everyone’s attention to a small city nestled in the hills. It was Usfan, the place he had chosen as his line in the sand, the point beyond which he would not allow the aliens to pass.

  Directly ahead, the monstrous bulk of the city destroyer hovered like an airborne cancer between the blue sky and the dun brown earth. The radios erupted with nervous chatter as the pilots called out the sighting. A moment later, Thomson’s voice came from the radio tent back in the Empty Quarter.

  “Sounds as if you’ve made visual contact. Is that right?”

  He was answered simultaneously in half a dozen languages. Everyone monitoring the frequency confirmed that the destroyer was in sight, then began asking the colonel for information on its airspeed, elevation, and distance.

  “Pilots, pilots,” Thomson broke in, “these transmissions are being recorded. Please try to speak one at a time, and identify yourselves when you do.”

  “What the hell is the point?” asked Sutton, his voice dripping with disgust.

  “The point, Lieutenant Sutton, is that you never know. If you chaps pull off a miracle and beat these sons of bitches, it’ll be one for the history books. This audiotape we’re making might show up on the BBC someday, and you’ll be famous.”

  Sutton scoffed. “Thomson, I wish you were up here to see this thing we’re facing. Then you wouldn’t sound so damn chipper. In a day or two, there’s going to be no one left to read any history books. But go ahead and make your tape. Maybe the aliens will find it someday and get a good laugh out of it.”

  Tye came on the radio. After stating his name as the colonel had asked, he said, “The thing I would like to add to the historical record is that I wish Sutton would keep his bleeding pie hole closed until he has something useful to say for himself.”

  Several other pilots laughed and seconded Tye’s motion.