Rotten Gods

by Greg Barron

  Beside the guard house, as Don changes down a gear and brakes, PJ sees a tall, slim figure waiting. At first the sight does not register, but then a sickening awareness descends, slowed by the alcohol in his veins.

  Don reaches the same conclusion. ‘Uh oh, looks like we’re busted.’

  PJ groans. ‘Doesn’t he ever sleep?’

  ‘Obviously not. But just let me do the talking, OK? You open that gob of yours and we’re both on a charge for sure.’

  As the jeep slides to a halt, Captain Pennington’s face appears in the window, narrow and angular. ‘Where the hell have you two been? Your leave pass expired at twenty-three-hundred.’ PJ opens his mouth to speak, but Pennington hasn’t finished. ‘Pull over and get out.’

  As Don pulls over to the road verge PJ hisses, ‘What the hell is he up to?’

  ‘Don’t know, but I doubt it’s pleasant.’

  They walk towards Pennington, who snaps, ‘Take off those jackets and leave them in the jeep. You don’t need them.’ Standing in front of them he begins to stretch. ‘Now copy me.’

  ‘What the hell are we doing?’

  ‘You mean what the hell are we doing, sir?’

  PJ mumbles the correction.

  ‘We’re warming up,’ Pennington continues. ‘You should know that; you’re the fittest man in the troop.’

  For a minute or two, PJ attempts the bends and stretches, losing his balance more than once. ‘Why are we warming up, sir?’

  Pennington begins to jog on the spot. ‘Because we’re going for a run. The Rock.’

  PJ groans aloud. ‘The Rock? At night? You’ve got to be joking. It’ll kill us.’ He sees Don from the corner of his eyes, reads his expression — It’s your fault we’re so late.

  ‘Follow me,’ Pennington shouts.

  First Don, then PJ, lumbers drunkenly after him.

  ‘Why?’ PJ gasps. ‘Why this? Why now?’

  ‘Because you’re drunk, and in two hours you’re going to war.’

  THE SECOND DAY

  And God said, ‘Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water. So God made the expanse and divided the waters. God called the expanse ‘Sky’. Yet carbon from the cars, fires and machines of the world poisons the firmament. Toxic gas forms a blanket over the planet, locking in heat.

  Trees and other plants that might absorb the deadly gases are removed at unprecedented rates. In the world’s largest cities, fog mingled with a soup of chemical aerosols and smoke settles on windless days, forcing the inhabitants to wear masks. In some places the haze never lifts, and Homo sapiens lose touch with the stars and the moon. The sun is forever aflame, tinged with orange fire.

  There was evening and morning. The second day.

  Day 2, 05:00

  Even now, with the power of life and death over a thousand men and women, surrounded by comrades with guns, Dr Ali Khalid Abukar’s rage burns as brightly as ever.

  He is angry at how the Western media machine seeks to stamp the label ‘terrorist’ on every Muslim; at how the truths of history can be glossed over by men and women with short memories and a vested interest, the media forgetting that violent Christian militancy predates that of Muslims in the twentieth century. How in Lebanon such groups as the Maronites launched a reign of terror as the country descended into a bloody fifteen-year civil war back in the 1980s. A time when gangs belonging to both religions struck and retaliated with atrocity after atrocity.

  When the Twin Towers fell in New York, mosques were firebombed and Muslims assaulted from Sydney to London, and the Western man on the street was happy to tar one billion human beings with the same brush. When young, dispossessed Muslims responded in kind, it served to fuel the futile cycle of violence while the real struggle, that of survival, continued in the majority world. Westerners seemed unable to understand that there are as many different kinds of Muslims as there are fish in the sea. The reverse was also true, Ali knew. Not all Westerners are thoughtless and bigoted.

  The US-led attack on Afghanistan, Ali decided, could be justified. But the second invasion of Iraq confused and enraged him. So many wrongs. One million deaths. Five million displaced civilians. Half the population living in utter poverty even ten years after the invasion. A nation of orphans and widows.

  Abu Ghraib. Seven thousand prisoners guarded by three hundred and fifty reservists who had orders to ‘soften’ the prisoners up. Ali would never forget images of Lynndie England and her Iraqi prisoner on a chain. America as overlord. Muslim as dog.

  The murder of Baha Mousa, and the abuse of ten others at the hands of troops from Britain’s Lancashire Regiment, led to compensation payouts in the millions of pounds, and a realisation that so-called higher civilisation does not preclude cruelty. Ali felt a terrible, powerless rage as he followed the trial of the soldiers responsible. One man was jailed for a year, the others suspended from duty. He wondered how much more harshly the perpetrators of homicide and torture would have been treated if the victims were Western civilians.

  In March 2011, Reverend Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center, Gainsville, Florida, burned a Qur’an in front of his congregation. Afghan media whipped the public into a frenzy of outrage about the incident, forming a mob that marched from the central suburb of Chowk Saheedan to the UN compound in Kandahar, burning schools, tipping vehicles, chanting ‘Death to America’. The violence spread to other regions. Ten people died in the chaos, almost a hundred were injured.

  Meanwhile, in Uganda, a Christian militia gang, the Lord’s Resistance Army, developed recruitment tactics that included setting fire to a school, ringing it with gunmen, and press-ganging any boy who managed to escape the flames. These new recruits were then introduced to the arts of rape and murder in the name of God.

  Dozens of ex-Guantanamo Bay detainees took up arms for al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula, fighting security forces in Yemen. US officials expressed surprise. This reaction confused Ali. Are they really so blind? Why can they not see that hate breeds hate? At this time he read Abdullah Azzam’s The Love and Hour of the Martyrs, a work that both frightened and compelled him, calling on all Muslims to fight jihad in the name of God.

  Swathes of Africa were purchased by foreign interests and planted to the new wonder crop, the South America-sourced jatropha, grown to produce biodiesel for a Western world unable to conceive of life without the emissions-belching engines that power it. Subsistence farmers were evicted from land formerly useless to serious monoculture, now made possible by the amazing resilience of jatropha.

  The focus of oil production moved to Africa, and the environmentally destructive and poisonous tar sands of Canada and Asia. The melting ice caps of the polar regions opened up ninety billion barrels of potential reserves, at huge environmental cost. Oil companies spent more on political lobbying than Gabon or the Ivory Coast spend on health and education combined. Fracking techniques used for extracting coal seam gas set off seismic waves around the globe. Earthquakes shook cities and filled mortuaries with the bodies of the dead.

  Meanwhile, in the Congo, children and teenagers laboured from dusk to dawn, working knee-deep in water, using long rakes to scrape the mud from the river bed, then dig a basin in which gravel is swirled so that the precious mineral coltan — vital ingredient of smartphones, video game consoles and computers — could be extracted.

  Armed guards of the FDLR, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, stood nearby with assault rifles and whips. They checked the extracted ore and placed it in chests, ready for collection. The profits from the illegal theft of these Congolese resources bought guns and ammunition for this Hutu army in exile, the same men who once shocked the world with the genocide of the Tutsi people, one of the blackest chapters in human history that saw almost a million humans shot or hacked to death.

  Accelerated climate change saw the ice caps melt at a pace beyond any forecasts. No one predicted just how quickly it would happen. The permafrost melt accelerated, quadrupling the rate
of carbon absorption into the atmosphere. One of the first manifestations of catastrophic climate change was the invasion of salt into freshwater rivers. The Mekong, in Vietnam, relied on by seventeen million subsistence farmers, became saline up to eighty kilometres from the mouth. Families watched their crops fail to emerge, or wilt and die.

  First, second, and even third generation refugees, born on the long hard flight to safety and freedom, filled internment camps in Germany, Great Britain, Poland, the Czech Republic, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Australia’s offshore islands. Public opinion swayed governments into dealing harshly with asylum seekers, often in defiance of their human rights obligations.

  Sea levels continued to rise, and supertides wrought havoc on low lying villages, drinking water supplies and arable land. The Daad. Drought and famine in the Horn of Africa. Refugees poured out of Somalia’s rural areas and into the camps. Religious and clan warfare made effective aid distribution impossible.

  When climate change became an awakening humanitarian disaster the West vacillated — sent token aid and expressed regret — but coal power station smokestacks bellowed because no one could afford to stop them. The Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan provoked a wholesale movement back to the dirtier-fuelled plants. There was no money to spend on clean alternatives. Governments had borrowed hundreds of billions that they could not afford to repay.

  Hard decisions had to be made. Steps taken that would mean privation and difficulty for the citizens of developed nations. For Western governments, however, already fighting public anger over austerity budgets aimed at cutting unsustainable public sector and welfare spending, the required measures were political suicide and they knew it. They must be forced. There was no alternative.

  Ali Khalid Abukar watched his mother die in the Somali famine. Held her hand in those last moments. Learned how an aid agency had, in good faith, installed a petrol-powered pump in the wells of Durukh, providing gushing water where previously there had been just a trickle. Millennia-old channels overflowed, and precious water evaporated. Wells that had proved faithful for two thousand years ran dry in six months. The fields failed. No rain came, and the people starved.

  Ali made no secret of his feelings, joined with secret talk at the mosque and cafe. Flying to Algeria under a pretext, he met with the new wave of mujahedin. Under heavy guard, he travelled south on ancient, and often secret, trade routes deep into the Sahel, that ocean of semi-arid sand and stone that belts Africa at its widest. US strategists call this the ‘Terrorist Corridor’, lapping against Mali, Algeria and Nigeria.

  The convoy was a daisy chain of stolen vehicles — dusty Opel Fronteras, Land Rovers, Toyota Land Cruisers — manned by silent, bearded men with guns that never left their hands, climbing dusty, dry mountains that average less than one inch of rain each year. Ali rode in the back seat, flanked by the mujahedin, many of them blooded through years in AQIM — al-Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb — or the GSPC, both organisations famous for hijackings going back to the turn of the new century.

  The journey ended at a sandstone gorge, with hollowed entrances honeycombed into the rock, the Tora Bora of Africa. This cave complex, now home to al-Muwahhidun, might have been in use for ten or even fifty thousand years. Inside were storehouses, sleeping places, and meeting rooms. Ali was summoned to a separate chamber, alone.

  On the wall someone had scrawled the infamous words of the Egyptian Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. Words that had found a home on thousands of placards, terror manuals, and even bookmarks across the Muslim world:

  Divide their nation, tear them to shreds, destroy their economy, burn their companies, ruin their welfare, sink their ships and kill them on land, sea and air … may God torture them at your hands.

  Ali Khalid Abukar — forty-five years old, yet shaking like a child — looked across at the sweating faces, lit by a fire that smouldered in a stone crevice. The man who introduced himself as Zhyogal leaned close, cradling an assault rifle, tendons bunched like cables beneath the olive skin of his neck and shoulders. He, like the others, was dressed in camouflage fatigues, with the chequered shemagh wound around head and shoulders, his eyes just a slit in the opening. His voice was strong and persuasive, rising and falling poetically, each word enunciated with that rounded accent common to educated Africans, echoing in the vaulted darkness of the cavern.

  ‘You have told me of your anger, doctor, at how it is a choking vine that twists and twines through the vessels of blood that feed your heart. You are a believer in the true God, praise and glory be to Him. You have seen the Muslim tribes of Africa — the Bambara, the Tuareg, the Hutu, the Fulani, the Hausa, and the Mandinka — die in their hundreds of thousands from the policies and procrastination of the Zionists and Americans. You have seen the new terror that comes from the sea and the sky.’

  One of the men across the fire lit a cigarette, the tip flaring red as he inhaled. Pungent tobacco smoke drifted through the cavern, mingling with the underlying odours of bat excreta and decaying stone.

  ‘Your people are dying — screaming for help that never comes. North Africa is a well of poverty and corruption that the kufr fills with the waters of indifference and exploitation.’

  A helpless ache burned up from Ali’s throat, flooding into the back of his mouth. ‘That is true.’

  Another of the militants stood, his face furious. His eyes burned like coals in the pit of his skull. A man of unusual physical presence. His name was Saif al-Din, now growing in stature across the Muslim world. A wraith who broadcast fear and terror like a jinn, inflaming the faithful, putting steel in the core of the most fainthearted of believers. His face was as dark as the blackest reaches of the cave. The illusion of madness resided behind his eyes. His resolute spirit was as obvious as that of Zhyogal. In fact, the two might have been brothers. They looked at each other often, as if for approval. Two warriors. Kindred souls.

  ‘I have just returned from the Niger Delta,’ Saif said. ‘The American oil companies continue their plunder, and the seas are rising — seas polluted with oil. We must fight with more resolve even than those who came before us. Swear a bayat of allegiance to us and join your brothers in the struggle.’

  Tears welled in the corner of Ali’s eyes, burning as they rolled down the plane of his cheek. His throat ached. ‘I will do so without reservation. The leaders of the Western world will not listen. They seek to prolong the financial empire owned by a rich elite — unchanged. They send their young men and their missiles and their bombs to kill and maim our people. They have caused the world itself to alter and threaten my people. I have come to believe that Muslim countries must be ruled by the Sharia, not by foreigners and alien political systems.’

  Zhyogal kissed Ali first on one cheek, and then the other. ‘You are indeed welcome. You and I, from this moment, are brothers.’

  Day 2, 06:00

  The Hercules is Lockheed’s C130J stretched version, the latest manifestation of the giant transport aircraft that has flown everything from armoured personnel carriers to emergency aid into the world’s trouble spots for more than half a century. Marika finds the throbbing turboprops comforting — perhaps a throwback to her training days. Cables run along the starboard side, along with bench seats that would normally be lined with paratroopers making last-minute checks. Madoowbe sits beside her, occupied with adjusting a buckle on his harness, sinewy black arms shining with nervous sweat in the half light.

  Marika can smell him. Wonders if she emits the same scent. There is no Rexona in her underarms today. Smells can be as dangerous as sounds. Either can mean discovery and death on clandestine ops like this one.

  The logistics of this headlong rush through perilous airspace occupies Marika’s mind. On her back is a bulky Special Forces-issue parachute. A smaller pack, strapped to her ammo belt, contains clothes and food. Her Glock 9mm automatic is clipped tight into a canvas holster at her side.

  In less than thirty minutes they will drop into Somalia, the problem child of Africa — a land
torn apart by feuding warlords and their followers. The Transitional Federal Government, backed by the West, and bolstered by troops from the African Union, cannot unite a land where law issues from the barrel of an assault rifle, a place of famine, disarray, and disunity; bleeding and torn.

  Even so, Marika is determined, even in that failed state, to find Sufia Haweeya and take her back to Dubai. From the top pocket of her jacket she removes her personal CVCID, nicknamed ‘Sid’, the military version of the civilian smartphone that has proved indispensable in modern intelligence work. She punches in her PIN, then brings up a photograph of the woman on the screen: tall and willowy, high, sloping forehead and defined cheekbones lending her a regal beauty that Marika finds appealing yet intimidating. The sadness of her eyes suggests that life has not always been easy, yet the lips make a half-moon smile, as if she is ready to laugh. There is something familiar about her, also, something troubling that Marika cannot quite place.

  Can this woman make a difference? Marika isn’t sure, but it is one possibility in a situation devoid of options. It may not be possible to find her, in any case. I hope you’re ready, she says to the image, because I’m coming to get you.

  Putting the Sid unit back in its place she settles into the seat. She has always found parachuting into strange territory nerve-racking. Low-light drops are an order of magnitude worse. Now, scarcely dawn — ten thousand feet above the Somali desert, with God alone knows what down below — she feels close to terror. Slipping out of her harness, she staggers aft to the head and uses it, determined that it will be a long time before she needs to avail herself again. Back at her seat, she looks at her watch, knowing they must be close, regretting taking the mission on herself. She could have brought in any elite fighting force in the region. It was she, however, who insisted that one or two personnel would be less obvious, able to get in, assess the situation and call for backup if necessary. Madoowbe’s language skills and local knowledge will be invaluable.