Stephen Molstad - [ID4- Independence Day 03]

by War in the Desert (epub)

  “Yes, my condition is not uncommon during wartime”— Yamani nodded—“but it is a very dangerous one. Great fear can be contagious, spreading from man to man until an entire army can no longer fight. We must quarantine those whose knees have turned to water, as mine have. This is the same advice I gave to Ghalil Faisal. Are there any such men among the foreign pilots?” “One or two,” Reg answered.

  “You must isolate them immediately! Move them to the tent in the desert with the others! Khalid, arrange this with Faisal.” Each time Khalid heard his father mention Faisal’s name, he made a sour face and pretended to spit on the floor. “The man is a swine,” he said with a vehemence Reg didn’t understand.

  Just then, a jet fighter screamed overhead and Mr. Yamani’s composure collapsed completely. He rolled away from the window near his bed, shielding himself with the blanket. Khalid went to his side and tried to comfort him as Reg stood by awkwardly. Although the old man could diagnosis his condition, he was obviously helpless to control it. Eventually, Khalid led Reg out of the room and back to the kitchen area.

  “Thank you. Teacher.” he said, pulling bottles of French mineral water from a refrigerator and sliding into one of the seats at the table. “He is more at ease now.” Reg took a couple of dates from a bowl and popped them in his mouth as Khalid poured. “Now, tell me what happened over Jerusalem, Teacher, every detail. Together we will discover a weakness, a way to fight them.”

  Reg swirled the water in his glass. “I could use something stronger if you’ve got it,” he said.

  Khalid started to get up, but quickly changed his mind. “It would be unwise of me to offer you alcohol on my father’s plane, but I will try to send a package to your tent this evening.” He pointed forward and aft, indicating there were others aboard the jet.

  After much prodding, Reg began to recount the one-sided battle he’d fought that day. Up to that moment, he’d been doing his best to keep the memory of it buried, but now he let the scene flood back to him. He talked about the enormous firing cone and the circular wall of destruction it had unleashed. He described the missiles exploding against the giant ship’s shields, the ill-fated dogfight with the scarab attack ships. In a very real sense, the memory of the massacre was more devastating than the event itself. Several times during the retelling, Reg had to stop and gather himself before going on. And each time he did so, he would glance out the portal and see the Tent of the Fearful in the deepening twilight.

  During one of these pauses, a door opened and a beautiful young woman in her early twenties stepped into the dining area. Tall and slender, she wore her lustrous mane of coal black hair pulled back into a thick ponytail. She was dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt bearing the logo of Stanford University. Reg's eyes couldn’t help lingering over the curves of her body. It had been a long time since he’d seen a Saudi woman in anything except a black shroud, and longer still since he’d seen a woman as beautiful as the one that stood before him. One look into her bright green eyes told him she had to be Khalid’s sister.

  Khalid was not happy to see her. The moment she showed herself, he began shouting in Arabic and waving her out of the room. She studiously ignored him, casually moving to a set of cabinets above the sink. When she stood on her toes and reached for the handles on the high doors, the T-shirt climbed her torso revealing the clear dark skin on her stomach and the small of her back. Reg reached nervously for his water glass without looking away, without even blinking.

  Khalid sprang to his feet, showering her in curses and demanding that she return to her quarters. He pounded his fist on the table, spilling his water. This finally cracked the young woman’s cool demeanor. She turned away from the cabinets and shouted back venomously at her brother before approaching the table.

  “This must be the English pilot you’ve spoken of so often,” she said to her brother in a flawless American accent. “You never mentioned that he was so handsome.” If the comment was designed to get under Khalid’s skin, it worked. He erupted into a fresh round of shouting. She ignored him and locked eyes with Reg. “Forgive my brother’s idiotic behavior. He pretends to be progressive but he’s a very typical Saudi male chauvinist pig.” With that, she left the room leaving the two men in silence.

  “Well, that was interesting,” Reg said, pouring Khalid a fresh glass of water. “I’ve never seen you react like that to a Saudi woman in Western clothes.”

  “My sister!” Khalid said, scowling at the closed door. “She has always been defiant, but now it is worse, much worse. Since she returned from America, she does nothing but make trouble. I apologize that you had to see her like that.”

  Reg hadn’t exactly minded. In fact, he thought of asking Khalid to invite her back in, but decided to say nothing.

  “We are seeing this problem more and more in Saudi Arabia,” Khalid told him.

  “What problem is that?”

  “These girls,” he said with a dismissive wave. “They return from university in Europe or America with the idea of challenging the man’s authority. They rebel against everything, mindlessly. It lasts until they marry and begin to bear children.”

  Reg bit into another date. From an Englishman’s perspective, the way Saudi women were treated amounted to legalized slavery. They were kept virtual prisoners in their own homes and had few legal rights to protect them from the whims of their husbands, fathers and brothers. Some years earlier, the entire English military presence had withdrawn from the country in protest when a

  Saudi father legally executed one of his daughters by drowning her in the family swimming pool after finding her alone with an unmarried man. The man was not charged.

  Khalid sat down and sipped his water, then whispered across the table. “Fadeela is an especially unhappy and willful girl. I am sad to say that the blame for this must rest largely with my father. He has allowed her to develop unrealistic expectations about her future.”

  “Such as?”

  “It is not important,” Khalid said with a sudden, broad smile. “But I pity the man who takes her one day to be his wife. He will be buying himself a lifetime of headaches. But enough! We have more important matters to discuss.”

  Still convinced he could discover a chink in the alien armor by listening to Reg’s account, Khalid began quizzing him on every aspect of their technology. But they were soon interrupted again, this time by a knock on the outer hatch. A soldier had arrived with an important message. Khalid excused himself and spoke to the man outside.

  Reg hungrily filled his mouth with dates and studied the richly appointed interior of the jet. He was still chewing when a door opened and Fadeela returned. He watched her reach into the cabinet above the sink and retrieve a bottle of brandy then slide into the seat across from him. She poured drinks into a pair of fresh glasses and leaned toward him intensely.

  “I’ve been listening to you talk to my fool brother. Before he comes back, I want you to tell me your plan for defeating the invaders.”

  Reg’s eyes opened wide. Plan? He didn’t have so much as a single solid idea, much less anything that could be called a plan. But his mouth was too full of sweet, sticky fruit to say any of this to the woman staring at him across the table. He held up a finger and chewed rapidly. Hoping to clear his mouth, he took a swig of the drink she’d poured him. While it was an excellent brandy, it was also the first alcohol to pass his lips for many months. He shuddered and coughed as it crashed through his system. It was some moments before he was able to speak.

  “Here's the thing, Miss Yamani, I don’t have a plan. I don’t think anyone does. We’ve never seen anything like this before, and at the moment, my only plan is to stay alive long enough to make a plan.”

  “Unacceptable,” she said, shaking her head in disappointment. “We cannot simply wait here, huddled in the desert, while the world goes up in flames. They’re moving, you know. They’re moving toward a fresh set of targets. While you sit here chattering with Khalid and eating dates, we’re being systematically
exterminated.”

  Systematically exterminated. The ugly phrase put a knot in Reg’s stomach and he reached for the bottle. “What about you?” he asked, pouring. “Do you have any ideas?”

  For the first time, Fadeela’s expression softened. She seemed surprised to be asked for her opinion. “Of course I have ideas. But this is Saudi Arabia and none of the men in charge is interested in what a woman might have to say.”

  “I’m listening,” Reg said evenly.

  “We need to find a way to penetrate their shields. How can we circumvent them? Are they vulnerable to electricity? To chemicals? Maybe to something as simple as water? We must try everything. What about nuclear weapons? We should be laying plans to attack their mother ship which is out in space. Perhaps that one does not have shields. There are still a thousand options.”

  Reg nodded seriously, as if he were considering her ideas despite their obvious impracticality. It didn’t take Fadeela long to realize what he was doing.

  “Don’t patronize me, Major Cummins,” she hissed. “It is true that I have no military training, but at least I realize the need to find a solution as quickly as possible. And the first thing I would change is that you foreigners should not be kept in isolation. We should all be talking to one another, searching for a strategy. We need more communication, not less. But that idiot Faisal does everything he can to keep you divided. It is easier to control you that way.”

  “In all fairness, Miss Yamani, the foreign pilots were divided long before we arrived here.”

  “Stop calling me Miss Yamani. My name is Fadeela,” she said. “The point is that we can no longer afford to act like Saudis, or Iraqis, or Egyptians, or whoever. We must begin to think and act together, as humans!” She paused long enough to take a sip of her drink.

  “I notice you and your brother have at least one thing in common. You both seem to dislike this Faisal character.”

  Fadeela’s lips curled when she heard the name. “Ghalil Faisal makes all of his decisions based on his own interests. He is a snake.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  There was an awkward silence during which Fadeela continued to stare across the table as if she were waiting for him to say something brilliant, something that would lead to the swift and sure destruction of the invaders. Reg tried to avoid making eye contact. Each time he looked at her, he felt thrown off-balance by her disconcerting green eyes and the beauty of her face—inappropriate thoughts during a military strategy session. He glanced out the window and saw that Khalid was still talking to the soldier. “Major, I must ask you another question.”

  “Stop calling me ‘Major,’ he said, imitating her. “My name is Reg.”

  She didn’t react. “I am wondering, Reg, what is it that you fight for?”

  The question took him by surprise. “I’m not sure what you mean. Are you asking what cause I’m fighting for?”

  “Precisely. Do you fight for the love of your country?”

  “I serve tny country,” he told her, “but I’m not one of these rah-rah, Rule-Brittania types.”

  “For a wife and children then?”

  “Haven’t got any of those. Why are you asking?”

  Fadeela studied him sadly. “Because I don’t see the man my brother has described to me.”

  “I’m afraid Khalid has a tendency—”

  “His tendency,” she interrupted, “has been to describe you as an intelligent and resourceful warrior. But you don’t look that way to me.”

  Reg’s anger flared suddenly to the surface. “Look here, princess, I’m awfully sorry I can’t whip up a quick fix to your pesky alien problem, but I’ve trained half the men in your bloody air force. I'm a pilot and a teacher, and a damned good one. I don’t need to apologize to you for not being something else!” Fadeela leaned toward him, matching his anger. “The time for teaching is past us. Now is the time for action, for warriors. But you have nothing to fight for.”

  They stared murderously at one another until Reg sniffed and turned away. “It’s been a long, hot day and I’m completely knackered. Maybe—”

  “And don’t call me princess,” she interrupted again. “I hate that. I am not a princess.” She stuffed the cork back into the bottle, put it back in its place then headed toward her room. She stopped and turned, wanting to say something before she left. All the harshness left her face as she struggled to find the words she wanted, but after a moment of trying, she gave up and closed the door.

  3

  Meetings

  By the time Reg made his way back to the international side of the runway, darkness had fallen. He found that a small forest of tents had sprouted beneath the wings of the jet fighters. Reg had thought that the tents, a goodwill gesture from Faisal, might have fostered a spirit of cooperation among the different groups of pilots. Instead, they had only encouraged the contingents to move farther apart. The Iraqi tents were pitched as far as possible from the Iranians, Reg noted, and the Israelis appeared to have negotiated with the Jordanians so that Edward and his friends formed a buffer zone between Muslim and Jewish camps. A diagram of the camp would have nicely illustrated the geopolitics of the region.

  Reg made his way toward the British tents, pitched directly beneath the wings of the Tornadoes. As he passed behind the one enclave, laughter rang out. Looking over, he saw that Thomson was sitting cross-legged among a group of Syrian pilots. As he thumbed through his phrase book, straining to read in the dim light cast by the small dung fire, one of the pilots threw some dried branches across the flames. The smell of sandalwood floated through the chill night air.

  It’s good he survived, thought Reg of the lieutenant colonel. He may be setting himself up as a laughingstock, but he’s doing a good job as ambassador-at-large, too.

  There was no movement at the British camp. A neat stack of dung briquettes sat next to a basket of scented kindling, but neither had been disturbed. Reg assumed the other two Brits were talking with some of the internationals. He’d not been lying to Fadeela when he told her he was tired, so he chose a tent at random and lifted the flap, intending to crawl inside and go to sleep.

  There was a sudden movement inside the tent, followed immediately by the unmistakable metallic click of a pistol being cocked. Reg stumbled backward as Sutton emerged from the tent, looking around wildly, obviously just awakened.

  Seeing Reg sprawled on the ground, Sutton put the gun on safety, and growled, “Damn it, Cummins! What the hell are you doing sneaking about?”

  Sitting up and dusting sand off of his flight suit, Reg said, “Tad jumpy, aren’t we?”

  Tye crawled out of another of the tents, as Sutton replied, “You scared the piss out of me. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s an alien invasion going on. Call your name out next time.” Sutton reached back into the tent for his boots, pulling out a pack of cigarettes as he did so.

  Tye said, “So, Major, I guess you’re pretty tight with the Saudis.”

  “What are you going on about now, Tye?” asked Reg.

  “Well,” said the young man, “that big captain knew your name. So did that Saudi pilot at the supply plane. Then you went off to the private planes while the rest of sat out here freezing our arses off. What kind of crazy place is this, anyway? Hot as the devil during the day, then cold as a Shetland Islands winter at night.”

  “That’s the desert for you,” said Reg. “As to being ‘in tight,’ that’s probably an exaggeration. I have a few friends in the Saudi military establishment. Quite a few of these fellows went through the Flight and Training program at Khamis Moushayt.”

  “One of the Saudis at the supply plane told Yossi and me that you’re a top gun, that you kicked some serious butt in Desert Storm.”

  “You heard wrong,” said Reg a little too harshly. He didn’t

  want to discuss his performance during the conflict with Iraq.

  Sutton had his cigarette lit and was looking doubtfully at the fuel they’d been provided for a campfire. “Th
is grease monkey is convinced you’re going to save us.” He picked up a briquette and sniffed it. “What is this shit, some kind of charcoal?”

  “You’ve got it backward. It’s charcoal made out of shit,” said Reg. “That’s dried camel dung, Sutton.” As the lieutenant cursed and began scouring his hands with sand, Reg turned to Tye.

  “Look, lad,” he said, “I can fly a plane, sure. But no amount of fancy flying is going to do us any good against these aliens. You saw their shields. You saw the maneuverability those fighters of theirs possess. If we’re going to beat these bastards, it’s not going to be through head-to-head aerial combat.”

  “Especially since there probably aren’t that many combat aircraft left to send against them,” said Sutton. “Rumors are going around, pretty much confirming what we heard from Khamis Moushayt before they went off the air. Thirty-six cities destroyed, and now the blighters have moved on to have a go at another thirty-six. A radio message came in from some Druse militiamen holed up in the mountains of Lebanon. They reported that the Jerusalem ship was moving into Jordan.”

  “What about the one over Turkey?” asked Reg, worried that they might have two ships to worry about in their neighborhood instead of just one.

  “We’ve not heard anything at all from farther north,” said Tye. “Which is just as well, I suppose, given what these Saudis are planning.”

  “And what’s that?” asked Reg.

  “That tall Ethiopian, Remi, told us that the Israelis told him the Saudis had been talking to the Egyptians. Apparently, they plan to go in with guns blazing if the local ship moves toward Mecca. They told the Egyptians the only way to get their planes refueled was to help defend the city.”