Wrath & Righteousnes Episodes 01 to 05

by Chris Stewart

  The list of crisis locations was pages long: a hundred years’ worth of pent-up hatreds, imagined grievances, hostilities, jealousies, and darkening evil bursting like a rotting egg, the poison and decay finally rupturing the fragile shell.

  Iran fired first, bent on reaping revenge upon Israel for attacking their fellow Shiite brothers in Gaza. For years the Iranians had threatened to wipe Israel off the map and they knew this would be their best chance to take their shot.

  When Israel detected the Iranians preparing their long-range missiles, they launched their own missiles in a preemptive attack. Forty minutes later, the missiles passed each other in suborbital space. The difference between the outcomes was that Israel had spent twenty years and more than five hundred million dollars on a missile shield defense. The Green Pine search-and-fire control radars saw the incoming Iranian missiles. The Citron Tree Battle Management Command and Control Centers targeted each of the seven warheads. High-altitude Arrow missiles destroyed the first four. The three remaining missiles penetrated Israeli airspace. U.S. Patriot missiles went after them once they had descended below fifty kilometers. Two of the remaining nuclear missiles were defeated, leaving only one to get through. Its target was Tel Aviv, but it had been knocked off course, missing the city by almost eight miles.

  Tens of thousands of Israelis were killed when the nuclear warhead detonated, but nothing even remotely close to what would have been the death toll if the missile had stayed on track.

  Iran, on the other hand, wasn’t so well defended. All of the Israeli missiles reached their targets. The three largest cities inside Iran were gone.

  Pakistan, bent on protecting its Muslim brother, began to fuel its missiles. Multiple warheads from India and Israel caught them before they could get in the air.

  North Korea was just finishing fueling its missiles when the sky was darkened above the launching pads by sea-launched and air-launched Cruise missiles. All told, more than a hundred conventional missiles destroyed the Korean launch sites, half of them South Korean missiles launched from just across the border. The North Koreans never had a chance, their first-generation launch and delivery systems too slow and cumbersome to compete in the twenty-first century of modern war. All of the launch facilities were destroyed, leaving a few missiles intact in their underground storage facilities but no way to get them in the air.

  Then the world seemed to pause, a depressing and dark despair settling from one end of the earth to the other. Blackness filled the air. Nuclear rain fell in the deserts. Ten million people breathed in radioactive oxygen. The sunsets were dark red, almost purple, from the ionized smoke and dust that filled the atmosphere. Was it over? Was it just beginning? How far would it go? Almost a million people had died already. Gaza; Washington, D.C.; Tehran; Isfahan and Shiraz lay in heaps of smoking rubble.

  It wasn’t over.

  The worst was yet to come.

  And there was no way to stop the attack that was heading for the blue waters off eastern and western U.S. shores.

  SIX

  Twenty-Four Kilometers South of Camp Crush, Southern Iraq

  Short and fierce (all of the firefights they had were fierce now), the attack hit Captain Sam Brighton and his team at night, half a kilometer from the mud-and-brick wall that surrounded the small village.

  After sending a false informant to accuse the village of hoarding a cache of weapons, the Syrian and Iranian insurgents had hidden in the desert, burying themselves under tarps and a thin layer of sand and breathing through reeds. There they had waited, knowing the American soldiers would eventually come.

  When it came to killing Americans, the insurgents were very patient. A few days buried in the sand was a small price to pay.

  Sam and his patrol had approached the tiny village on foot, avoiding the pathway from the main road, knowing it was likely mined. The attackers waited until they had passed, then shed their protective tarps and opened fire. Fortunately, they had waited too long, allowing enough distance between their hiding place and the American soldiers for Sam’s team to drop and find protection below a small ravine.

  One enemy team was positioned behind the U.S. patrols, one team on the flank. They revealed themselves as one, breaking cover and opening fire at the same time. Their tactics were effective if not particularly heroic: shoot the Americans with several thousand rounds from AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades lighting up the night, then turn and run.

  For the American soldiers, the firefight was like a burst of lightning: sudden, frightening, and intense. One moment they were stalking toward the village, three to five meters apart, hidden by the darkness, moving silently across the sand; the next moment they were in the middle of hell with tracers, bullets and explosions all around.

  For Sam, the battle came in a fury of dizzying sound and speed. Explosions. Flashes of light. Heat and compression. Calls from his buddies. A quick roll across the sand. Another punch of compressed air in his ears and chest. Screams beside him. One of his men going down. The buzz of deadly bullets around him, above him, one between his legs. Falling again, pushing to his knees, rolling toward the ravine, returning fire behind and to the right. Calling in suppression fire from the United States. A-10 fighters providing cover from overhead. The fighters screaming in. Dozens of frantic shadows all around him. Calibrated and careful fire from his team now. One, three, five, six enemies going down. The screams of a dying man beside him. Sulfur, smoke and the smell of vomit in the air. A medic rushing toward the wounded. An AirEvac helicopter on the way.

  The enemy fighters started running, their ghostlike images merging into the darkness up ahead.

  One of the enemy soldiers nearest to Sam turned, shot one of Sam’s men at point-blank range in the face, then, laughing, turned and ran!

  The sound of that guttural and bloodthirsty laughter snapped something inside Sam. In a rage, Sam grabbed his machine gun and pursued the fleeing men. As he ran, the image of the battle began to blur again. Darkness formed around him. He ran hard and fast. The sounds of his buddies echoed far behind him. The ground rose suddenly, the desert becoming rocky, black boulders here and there. Sam kept running, chasing after the enemy soldiers, ignoring the sound of Bono shouting in his earpiece, “SAM, DISENGAGE AND GET BACK HERE! I WANT YOU BACK HERE RIGHT NOW!”

  The laughing soldier struggled to keep up with the others, not realizing that Sam was coming after him. Sam looked farther up the hill and saw two more enemy soldiers, twenty meters ahead of the last man, skulking images in his night-vision goggles.

  He stopped and estimated the distance between them. Two hundred meters. Maybe seven hundred feet. A long shot, a very long shot, especially in the dark . . .

  One of the men turned back, saw him in the darkness, and fired. Milliseconds later, Sam felt the buzzing rounds of red-hot metal flying past his head. Another shot and then another as the three men turned and fired.

  Dropping to his belly, he extended the biped legs from his machine gun’s barrel, took a breath and held it, and then tightened up his aim. More bullets popping into the ground around him. Geysers of spitting sand around his face. An ounce of pressure on the trigger. Another breath. A bead of sweat dropping into his left eye. Another ounce of pressure on the trigger. . . .

  Phaaat, phaaat, phaaat.

  The three enemy attackers fell to the ground.

  Sam pulled his head away from his machine gun and stared across the barren landscape, studied the rising desert above him. The three attackers didn’t move. Their limp bodies were sprawled at awkward angles across the loose sand. They were dead, he was certain. His seven point sixty-one millimeter rounds—large enough to drop a buffalo—made mincemeat of the attackers.

  He rested on his stomach, laying his head against the sand.

  He felt so tired. So consumed. So empty and thin. A long moment passed. He didn’t stand. He didn’t move. The darkness grew around him. Thoughts were swimming in his head. A crushing moment of loneliness fell upon him. He’d never felt
this way before. Confusion, bitter disappointment, and a sadness so deep he thought it would crush his very soul.

  His mind swirled. His heart raced. He rolled onto his back, overcome, his eyes misting, his nose wet. He thought of the death of the man who had become his father, General Brighton. His birth mother, where was she? Snorting drugs in Atlantic City? Out in Las Vegas again? He thought of his adoptive mother and his brothers. Sara Brighton and her family were the best thing that had ever come into his life. Simply the best. Nothing else was even close. Where were they? Were Sara, Luke, and Ammon still alive? The entire city of Washington, D.C., two hundred thousand people, burned and dead. He thought of the Afghans, Iranians, Iraqis and Syrians. None of them would have freedom. Freedom would never come to them. It was all coming down. It was falling apart. Everything they had fought and died for, everything every U.S. soldier who’d been hurt or killed for, the families who had suffered, the children without fathers, widowed women, mothers without sons, everything they had suffered. . . .

  All of it for nothing.

  All of it was gone.

  He took a breath, his shoulders shaking. Then he did something he had not done since he was a child, not since the first night with the Brighton family when he had hidden his head between the pillows and begged God to let him stay.

  He took a deep breath and started weeping, the emotion spilling out in gulping sobs.

  All of it for nothing.

  All the sacrifices washed away.

  He tried to hold it in, but he couldn’t, it was just too powerful. So he cried, alone in the desert, his shoulders heaving. He struggled and he fought it, but it gushed out all the same. His face was wet with tears and sweat, the sand gritty against his cheeks, the salty teardrops rolling downward to sting the corners of his mouth.

  He gulped the air. He cursed and swore.

  And kept on crying like a child.

  Royal Palace, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

  King Al-Rahman paced, his face contorted in rage. “That idiot Iranian should have waited,” he hissed. “We could have done it together. We could have taken the Jews down. But no, he wouldn’t listen! He wanted the glory of killing all the Jews himself. He lost three of his cities! And the Jews, not one! He should have waited. He should have listened. What a stupid, stupid man!”

  The old man didn’t react. That a million people were dead was not a big thing to him.

  The young king watched him, expecting some reaction, paced again, then fell silent, standing in front of the old man. The old man looked at him, his eyes cold and wet and bleary. His nostrils flared as he breathed.

  “The United States is getting ready to attack us,” the king muttered bitterly. “They’ve warned us to evacuate our cities. But they’ll never get that far.”

  “No, they won’t, King Abdullah. You have the power to destroy them. I suggest you use it now.”

  The king looked away and blinked. “The United States is still a very powerful nation,” trying to mask his hesitation.

  But the old man sensed his timid heart. He hated the vacillation more than anything. His face flushed with rage. “Do you finally understand why we have to do this?” he demanded, his voice low and mean. He hated being the instructor, always taking the lead. Didn’t any of these idiots have the capability to think?

  King Al-Rahman stood in front of him, his eyes low. It was getting harder and harder to look at his friend. The old man’s skin had become so translucent that one could see the veins in his cheeks, and his eyes had grown so filmy that they almost looked dead.

  The king didn’t know who or what the old man was anymore. He didn’t know where he had come from or why he had been chosen by him. All he knew was that he had to follow, regardless of where he was led. He had made his decision to be the man’s servant a long time ago.

  The old man waited, his thin lips pressed together, his eyes boring through the pupil who was so slow to comprehend. “Do you get it?” he prodded angrily. “I want to know you understand.”

  King Al-Rahman was a proud man, tall and handsome, with dark skin and black eyes. He could walk into a room of world leaders and in minutes have them all eating out of his hand. But all of that slipped away when he was with the old man. And every time they were together, his groveling seemed to grow more and more pitiful, the old man extending his influence to the depths of his soul, twisting and turning the very breath out of him.

  Al-Rahman turned away, unable to look the old man in the eyes. “I understand you want me to do this, and that is good enough, my friend.”

  The old man nodded slowly. “Yes, it is good enough. But I want to know if I can trust you. I want to know what you understand.”

  The king took a breath, his voice uncertain. “We must destroy them because they are the Great Satan—”

  The old man lurched out of his seat and rushed toward the king with frightening speed. Getting right in Al-Rahman’s face, he exhaled a foul breath. “Don’t give me that!” he screamed. “You know, King Abdullah, who the Great Satan really is! You know the Master Deceiver; you have felt him in your heart. You know him. You have loved him. He is now your only friend. So get past all the stupidity and tell me if you can! If you can’t, then shut up and listen once again.”

  Al-Rahman didn’t answer, his heart thumping, a dew of perspiration forming on his brow. The old man glared, snarled like an animal, then returned to his seat.

  “Listen to me, Abdullah.” His voice was softer now. “In a world of lies and deceptions, this is the only truth you have.

  “There are three reasons we must do this—three reasons we must destroy the United States.

  “First, if we want to deny mankind their freedom, we must destroy the U.S. I don’t understand it,” the old man scoffed and spit, “but the Americans will sacrifice their lives, if necessary, defending the freedom of people they don’t even know. It makes no sense—I know that, no one knows it more than I—but they will fight and die for others, even those who can’t repay them or make them rich.

  “That is the first reason we must destroy them. If we do that, we own the world. But as it is, the U.S. continues to be this obnoxious and glaring light on the hill. If we let it shine, the world will continue moving toward it like a moth to a fire. Simply put, we must remove that light before we can control the rest of the world. Once we have destroyed the U.S., we can take our time, toppling the other democracies at our pleasure, for without the U.S. there to guard them, they are helpless as spoiled children.”

  Al-Rahman watched the old man, his dry lips spreading to a smile.

  “The second thing, my dear king.” The old man jabbed a bony hand toward the west. “The center of His people can be found in the U.S. Yes, their tent is wide, but the center stake is over there. They can’t spread the light if they are holed up in the dark.”

  Al-Rahman shook his head. He didn’t understand.

  The old man watched, then sniffed. “Forget it. That doesn’t matter. Just trust me, it is important in ways you cannot comprehend.

  “Now, the third reason. We must destroy the U.S. before we can take Israel down. If the Americans are around, they will defend it; we’ve seen it time and time again. They are nursing mothers to the Jews, protective fathers to their young. Will another nation step forward to protect them? No. Not a one. Anyone in Europe? Are you kidding! The Europeans now hate the Zionist almost as much as you do. China? Russia? Anyone? I tell you no. There is not a nation on the earth that will defend the Jews except the United States. So we must destroy their mothers before we can destroy the vile seed.

  “And remember, King Abdullah, history is absolutely on our side, the side of your people and the Arab nations that you rule. You are the chosen people. Ishmael was the firstborn. Hagar was the first wife to bear. Isaac was a second son and a liar, and his mother was no more. The birthright was stolen from you.” The old man spit in rage. “He’s the one who stole it from you.” He jabbed his finger at some unseen enemy that seemed to linger near. �
�He stole the ancient birthright from you. He stole it for His son. But it is yours! And you must claim it! The time has come to set it right. Destroy the counterfeit covenant people and we destroy their counterfeit god! But you can’t do that, King Abdullah, until you destroy the U.S.!”

  The old man stopped to catch his breath, his eyes burning. He was an animal in a cage, consumed with fear and rage. “Five thousand years we’ve been waiting to wipe His people off the earth. We have a chance to do that now, and you must not let me down!”

  Al-Rahman nodded, an overpowering sense of history falling on his soul, a massive weight that seemed to crush him to the center of the earth. No, it was more than just a sense of history—this was much larger and more powerful. A phrase slipped into his mind he had never heard before. He did not understand it, but still the words were clear. “The plans were laid many years before there was even a house of Israel placed on the earth. . . .”

  He faltered, stepping back, almost collapsing from the feel of it in his bones. The plans set in motion were as ancient as the stars. He was at the crossroads of eternal destiny and there was no turning back.

  The old man watched him and reached out, placing his hands on the king’s arm. Al-Rahman felt the dark power of his touch and seemed to gain instant strength.

  “There is more,” the old man whispered, “a final reason we must act. This is personal, I will admit it, but it’s also the most important reason of all. We’re going to kill them because I hate them. The years have left me full of fury and left them full of light.

  “Before they cast me out, I warned them. Now they are in my kingdom, and I will turn their lives into hell. I will center all my hatred on destroying their young faith.”

  The old man stopped and wiped the spit that stretched between his dry lips. His voice was low and soft now, and the king struggled to hear it when he said, “That is my final reason, though you will never understand.”