But there was a use for the prisoners. He saw the awful logic of it and shuddered. If they went to America, they’d be used to keep the Americans down – and extract a little revenge in return for real or imagined slights. Hundreds of them would be killed, yet the aliens wouldn’t care. They’d probably consider it a bargain. They’d get rid of two problems for the price of one.
“Wankers,” he snapped, angrily. He’d known Americans, served beside them, even spent months in their country. They deserved better. They could be convinced that they knew all the answers when they only knew half of them, but they had good hearts. “What the hell do we do about it?”
Gavin was more practical. “What can we do about it? Nothing.”
“Yeah,” Kalid said, bitterly. “The best we can do is hurt them as much as we can here and hope that it distracts them from America. Damn those ugly fucking bastards to hell.”
Chapter Nineteen
Chicago, USA (Occupied)
Day 135
Commissioner Ted Hanks felt sick to his stomach.
He’d never wanted to be anything more than Assistant Commissioner. The Commissioner of the Chicago PD was a highly politicised post and he had never been willing to buff sufficient asses. The previous Commissioner had been as much a politician as a police officer and he’d been one of the Mayor’s strongest supporters. He’d eaten his own gun after the Mayor had been assassinated, dumping the whole ungodly mess on Ted’s head. Ted would cheerfully have strangled the Mayor with his bare hands.
Not that he could argue with the Mayor’s logic. The aliens followed ROE that would have led to certain court martial and conviction for any American commander who even proposed them. Their response to being attacked was overwhelming firepower and their complete lack of concern for innocents caught up in the fighting was chilling. The Mayor had claimed that the police had to act as a barrier between the humans and the aliens – if they didn’t try to save lives, who would? There was no way they could throw out the aliens, so the best course of action was to cooperate and hope that it convinced the aliens to treat humans with a little more respect. Ted had never been entirely convinced of that logic – it struck him as wishful thinking – but such decisions were well above his pay grade. All he wanted to do, all he’d ever wanted to do, was be a cop. Right now, handing in his uniform and retiring to the countryside was looking mighty good.
The movies loved portraying gangs as being as well-armed as the police, if not better armed, but the truth was very different. Prior to the war, the gangs had rarely been well armed and their weapons were not always maintained properly. The gun control freaks screamed for more and more regulation – conveniently ignoring the fact that the gangs would ignore the law anyway – yet it hardly mattered. The gangs and inner cities could have been cleaned out very rapidly if the political will had been there. Instead, straw after straw had been piled on the camel’s back and police departments had come alarmingly close to losing their best men and women, even before the invasion. Now…now, many of the gangs had ties to the insurgents, who gave the gangs modern weapons and training, while hundreds of police officers had simply handed in their uniforms and gone home. They didn’t want to collaborate with the aliens, not when they found themselves caught up in a war zone and facing the disdain of family and friends. They just wanted it all to end.
He looked over at the man sitting in his office, looking as if he owned the place. General Imen Houssam claimed to have been a six-star General in the Syrian Army. He certainly had the patter down right, although personally Ted wouldn’t have trusted him to organise a whorehouse in Las Vegas. The aliens had brought him and his troops in through the airport – and landing them directly in parks and the few open spaces in the city – with orders to root out the insurgents, or else. Houssam looked depressingly eager and willing to carry out his task, although if one were fair, the aliens would probably tear him apart if he failed. During an unguarded moment, Houssam had admitted that he and his men had been captured and thrown into detention camps, and only released if they were willing to fight for the aliens. Bringing them to America, Ted had to admit, was a stroke of evil genius. The Arabs would have no contacts and no hope of mercy if they fell into American hands. They would have nowhere else to go. Using them in their own countries might have given them a chance to desert and escape. Using them in America would keep them fighting.
Houssam looked unhealthy, to say the least. Apparently, the life of a General in the Syrian Army had been an easy one, until the army had actually been called upon to fight. The aliens hadn’t been halted by UN resolutions and subtle pressure, as the Israelis had been more than once, and they’d just gone through the defenders like a knife through butter. Houssam had lost weight rapidly over the last month and it showed. The ill-tailored uniform he wore had been designed for a much heavier man. A month in the detention camp obviously hadn’t agreed with him. The aliens probably hadn’t bothered to feed the Arabs very much.
“I should have upwards of thirty thousand troops on the ground by the end of the week,” Houssam informed him. It was lucky for him, Ted knew, that the aliens were handling his logistics. The Arab force was united only in name. They’d jammed together Africans and Arabs from every country they’d invaded and occupied and many of them hated each other more than they hated the Americans, or even the aliens. The Military Police Houssam had brought along to enforce his orders were overworked trying to keep a lid on the fighting. There was certainly no hope that they would actually train as a unit. They’d been given Bradley Armoured Fighting Vehicles from a captured American Army Base, but they barely grasped how to drive them in a straight line. “Once they are all in position, we can begin operations.”
“Oh,” Ted said, dryly. He’d be astonished if the Arabs were ready in a month, but then, the aliens were breathing down their necks. The reward for failure would be harsh. “Do you feel that thirty thousand are enough?”
“We might outrun our supply chain,” Houssam said. Ted kept his face blank. He would have bet fifty dollars, even though the dollar was worthless now, that Houssam didn’t even begin to grasp the concept of logistics. “Bringing in everything we need is already pushing our superiors to the limit.”
They shared, for a second, a brief moment of mutual understanding. “A week,” Ted repeated. “And how exactly do you intend to proceed?”
The alien orders hadn’t been too specific. Ted hadn’t been able to decide if they trusted the people on the ground to handle it, or if it was a more humanlike attempt to dodge the blame if it all went badly wrong and the operation failed. The thought was bitterly amusing. Perhaps the aliens weren’t that alien after all.
“We’ll sweep through the city and remove all of the insurgents,” Houssam said. He’d certainly had some experience in removing insurgents. The Syrian Army had exterminated nests of radical Islamic fanatics before, when they’d gone too far in advance of their patron’s wishes. “It’ll only take a few days to complete their destruction.”
Ted closed his eyes. That wasn't just wishful thinking; that was…nonsense. He had no military experience himself, but he had participated in drug raids and area searches and they always took longer than expected. The criminals might decide that suicide by cop was a better end than years in jail with other hardened criminals. Sweeping the entire city, even if the Green Zone and some of the other areas were left alone, would take weeks at the very least. There would be resistance, of course. The resistance would certainly not allow such an intrusion to go unchallenged.
“I think you need more of a plan,” he said, as calmly as he could. Houssam could issue the orders and make the assault go ahead on his plan, if he decided to do so. He felt cold sweat prickling down his back. “Pull your men into the city. Occupy the roads and other important locations, and then cut off the area you want to search and go through it carefully. Check everyone you find. Anyone with a weapon or without an ID card goes into the bag. Anyone else gets treated gently. You don’t need mor
e enemies.”
“The only thing that terrorists understand is the liberal application of firepower,” Houssam said. Ted knew that there were plenty of Americans who would have agreed. “We go in hard and crush them before they can react.”
Ted sighed. “They already know you’re coming,” he said. He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a copy of Committees of Correspondence. The lead story focused on the Arab soldiers being moved into Chicago and prepared for an offensive against the resistance. In a saner age, the paper would probably have been charged with inciting racial hatred, describing the Arabs in words that would have shocked a soldier. They’d even outlined several possible attack plans that would have worked better than the actual plan. “If you move in hard, the entire city will be at arms against you. Treat people gently and you won’t get more enemies.”
“I have my orders,” Houssam repeated. His voice softened slightly. “We’ll try, but people – if you can call them people – are demanding results.”
They shared another look. “We’ll support you as best as we can,” Ted said, grimly. The resistance would damn him to hell for being a collaborator and they might well be right, but he didn’t want to see Chicago destroyed by the aliens, or the Arabs. It was a scene out of a bad movie. If half the remaining police force deserted…
“I know you will,” Houssam said. “Now, how about showing me where you keep the booze?”
Ted snorted. “I thought Muslims weren't allowed to drink,” he pointed out, pulling a small flask of whiskey from his drawer. “How much do you want?”
“Rules are for those” – he said an Arabic word Ted didn’t recognise – “pigs,” Houssam informed him. “We crushed them like ants two years ago and they never dared raise a hand to us again.” He took one of the glasses thankfully. “To victory!”
Ted echoed him reluctantly. “To victory!”
***
“Well, that’s us told,” Edward Tanaka said. He looked around at the masked faces. The four resistance leaders looked back at him. “What do we do now?”
The homemade newspaper – which would have ensured an instant sentence to the camps if it were found on his person – lay open in front of them, confirming what they’d already learned from the resistance network. The warning was chillingly clear. The aliens intended to launch a sweep and destroy mission using Arab troops through Chicago, clearing out the resistance once and for all. He flipped the newspaper shut – smiling thinly at the story about an Order Police patrol that had been captured, humiliated and released by a resistance unit – and dropped it on the floor.
“We have four options,” the Bitch Queen said. She ticked them off on her fingers. “We hide the weapons and withdraw into the surrounding population. We pull our people out through the tunnels and into the suburbs. We fight, or we surrender. Is anyone here seriously in favour of surrender?”
“I think you know better,” The Brain said, coldly. “They’re bringing in Arab troops, not more of their own people. We could fight the Arabs to a standstill without any bother at all.”
Edward was tempted to agree. The aliens had taken over the city’s stadiums for training their new troops and he’d watched them from a distance. The aliens would have been better off working with completely green recruits. At least they would have less to unlearn. They did have a handful of good officers – if nothing else, the aliens would have shattered the old Middle East power structure – but even the best officers in the world would have problems converting soldiers who’d had years to pick up bad habits into anything, but raw meat for the grinder. Judging from some of the reports, the different nationalities really didn’t get along and several unpopular officers had been killed by their own men. It did put a new perspective on disagreements within NATO. He doubted that any of them had led to murder.
“Except if we fight, the city will be reduced to rubble,” Muscles said. “I was at Fallujah. We wrecked most of the city in order to save it. We could turn Chicago into a nightmare for them, but we couldn’t stop them destroying the city.”
“We could have nuked any Iraqi city any time we liked,” the Bitch Queen pointed out. “We chose not to do so…”
“I would have hated to hear the screaming if we had nuked any city,” Pinkie said, thoughtfully. “There are people out there who wouldn’t have forgiven the President for launching a counterattack after the entire United States was nuked.”
Edward hit the table angrily. “Enough,” he snapped. “The aliens can destroy this city at any time and there’s fuck all we can do about it. Right! The question is if we fight or retreat. Leave the political debates to internet flame wars.”
His gaze swept around the table. “If we retreat through the tunnels - which carries the risk of having hundreds of our people trapped underground if the aliens realise what we’re doing - we will have to leave most of our stockpiled weapons here,” he added. “Can any of you swear that the ragheads won’t locate and destroy them? We’d have thrown away most of our heavy weapons for nothing. We could slip back into the city only to discover that we couldn’t be an effective force any longer.”
“And gives the Arabs more time to prey on helpless civilians,” Muscles added.
“They’re not helpless,” the Bitch Queen snapped. “There are plenty of people out there who have hidden weapons, even if they don’t have a direct connection to us.”
“And those who are discovered with weapons will go right into the camps,” Edward pointed out, coldly. The aliens had made that very clear. Humans were not permitted weapons, unless they were policemen or collaborators. “We’re running the risk of losing most of the city’s population to this…onslaught.”
The Bitch Queen snorted. “Let’s face it,” she said. “If we pull out our best fighters, the rest of the city is still going to fight anyway, so…we should fight. We have weapons, we have skills, we have the ability to make them bleed…and we have a duty to defend our country.”
“Defending the indefensible is not smart, but stupid,” The Brain said. “If the aliens start pouring down fire from heaven, we lose. The end. We could wipe out their garrisons and bases very quickly if they didn’t rule the skies above us.”
“We have to fight,” the Bitch Queen repeated. “The country was badly shaken by the defeat and occupation. We’d never faced anything like it. If we make a stand, even an unsuccessful stand, we will inspire resistance all around the world. If we surrender and spread our legs for them, we will discourage resistance. If we retreat, we convince them that we’re not going to challenge them. We have to fight.”
Edward couldn’t dispute her logic. It was hard to trust everything that came through the internet, but it couldn’t be denied that morale was low right across the country. The ongoing registrations and the rise of the Order Police damaged morale without inspiring resistance and…she was right. A heroic, if ultimately futile, defence of Chicago would serve as a rallying call for resistance all over the land. And yet…they’d be placing hundreds of thousands of lives at risk. Most of the city’s population had remained in the city, trapped behind the alien wall of steel. How many of them would die if they tore the city apart? The death toll would be incalculable.
“I think there is no choice,” Pinkie said. The Brain gave him an unreadable look. “We simply cannot pull out all of the unregistered people before they begin their sweep. All of those people are going to go right into the camps – or they can fight. With our help, they may become something that can actually give the aliens pause; without it, they will all die. I say we fight.”
“Fight,” The Brain echoed. “What other choice do we have?”
“None,” Muscles said. “When we were dealing with the aliens, there were…things they wouldn’t do, because they were aliens. Now they’re bringing in humans, the city’s suffering may only have just begun. We may be looking at looting and raping on a mass scale. It’s happened before and God knows it will happen again. We fight.”
“Fight,” the Bitch
Queen said. She looked down at her fingertips. “We fight until we can fight no more, then we booby-trap the bodies and let them inherit a tomb.”
Edward didn’t hesitate. “We fight,” he said. Disagreement wouldn’t have changed anything…and besides, he wanted to fight. Muscles might well be right. The aliens might have miscalculated by bringing in foreign troops. It wouldn’t be hard to whip up hatred against them even before the atrocities started. “I think the motion passed.”
The Bitch Queen snorted. “We’ll meet again before they start their sweeps,” she said. “We’ll sort out our plans and prepare our defences. Is there anything else before we split up again?”
“We need to find as many Arabic speakers as we can,” Edward said. “Chances are that a lot of the Arabs down there are conscripts who don’t want to be here anymore than we do. We might be able to convince some of them to join us, or give us information from inside the enemy camp. There’s bound to be a few Arabic speakers in the city.”
“I speak a little myself,” The Brain said. “Several of the retired soldiers in the city will speak more. I’ll make enquires.”
Edward bent down and picked up his copy of the underground newspaper. It fell open on a grainy picture of two handcuffed girls being led off by the Order Police. The underlying text suggested that they were in for a fate worse than death. He held it open to show them all what had happened to others who had dared to object.
“This is what we’re fighting,” he said, calmly. “We cannot risk falling into their hands. If we risk capture…”
He left the sentence unfinished. They all knew what he meant.
Chapter Twenty
Washington DC, USA (Occupied)
Day 136
Outside Context Problem: Book 02 - Under Foot Page 18