Arabian Nightmare td-86

by Warren Murphy

  Wincing, he flinched from the sharp quacking voice emanating from the ear device.

  "Immediately, O Master Chiun," he said.

  He replaced the device and went in search of a specific item in the dim room.

  Around him stood the treasures of the ages. Fine silks. Gold in all manner of shape and form. Jewels in jars, in heaps, spilling from silken sacks, lay in profusion. Coins bearing the likenesses of emperors of renown and obscurity were stacked in an open chest, segregated into two piles-those who paid on time and those who did not.

  The object of the old Korean's search hung in a place of honor.

  It was a sword. Over seven feet long, with a thin blade that flared into a broad spade-shaped point.

  The hilt was encrusted with exquisite emeralds and rubies.

  Taking care not injure himself, old Pullyang took the long ornate sword down from its silver pegs. Gingerly he bore it to a long ebony box and placed it within.

  The interior of the box was molded to accept the sword. He clapped the lid shut and threw two brass hooks into eyelets, securing but not locking the box.

  Then, after heating a bowl of wax, Pullyang affixed a seal atop the box. It was a simple device, a trapezoid bisected by a slash mark.

  It was, he knew, better than the securest lock, more valuable that the most expensive stamp, and more fearsome than any written warning against theft.

  It was the seal of the House of Sinanju and it would ensure that the sword reached its destination.

  With a sharp stick dipped in the hot sticky wax, Pullyang inscribed the destination on top of the box:

  TO PRESIDENT MADDAS HINSEIN PALACE OF SORROWS ABOMINADAD, IRAIT

  Then he went in search of a messenger who would go to the outside world and summon a lackey of the North Korean government to start the sword on its way.

  Chapter 31

  Saluda Jomart belonged to the Pesh Mergas. In Kurdish this meant: "Those Who Face Death."

  For hundreds of years the Kurds had suffered at the hands of the Arabs and Turks. For a century they dreamed of establishing a new Kurdistan in the north of Irait. For thirty years they had been at war with Irait.

  The cruel decrees of Maddas Hinsein were only the latest oppressor, but as oppressors went, Maddas was especially wicked. Not content to exterminate the Kurds through bloodshed and cruelty, he had unleashed his death gases upon simple Kurdish villages.

  Saluda had nearly died from such terror when the Iraitis had attacked his home village in the Behinda Valley.

  In those days, he had been the commander of an entire surlek-a company of one thousand men. After the gas had been blown away, leaving only black-skinned corpses, he was able to muster but a lek of 350 Kurds.

  Now, after the conquest of Kuran, he was down to a mere pal. But fifty men. The others had been forcibly conscripted into the Iraiti Army. It was a final cruelty-to be forced to fight for the oppressor.

  Still, Saluda looked forward to the day when these very Kurds would become vipers in the bosom of the oppressor who dared proclaim himself as modern Saladin-knowing that Saladin had been, not an Arab, but the mightiest of all Kurds.

  Saluda crouched in the crags of a mountain, cradling his 7.98 mm. Brno rifle-which he had pried from his valiant father's dead hands after a firefight-when the sound of a helicopter assaulted his ears.

  It did not sound like one of the oppressor's craft, so Saluda held his fire after he had crawled up to a place of advantage.

  It was a small craft, flying low, looking like a great dark shark of the sky. The markings were not Iraiti.

  It settled in the sand, throwing up sandy billows, not far from a village on the banks of the Shin River.

  Saluda clambered down from the mountain. Too late. The dark shark had already lifted off.

  But it had left behind a man and many boxes.

  Approaching cautiously, Saluda the Kurd saw that the passenger was an old man with strange narrow eyes. He stood resolute, chin up, his venerable white hair waving in the hot wind. He wore white, a color of bad omen.

  "I see by the pattern of your turban that you are a Kurd of the Barzani tribe," the little man said calmly, oblivious of the deadly maw of the Brno.

  "Spoken truly," said Saluda, whose red-and-white-checkered turban marked him as a warrior who never ran from battle. "And who might you be, strange man with strange eyes who speaks the tongue of my people?"

  "I am Chiun. My ancestors knew yours when they waxed mighty and were called the Medes."

  "Those days are all but forgotten, mamusta," Saluda said, respect softening his voice.

  The stranger cocked his head curiously. "Is the House of Sinanju, too, forgotten?"

  "Not forgotten, but the memory dims."

  "Then let it shine anew from this day forward," said the Master of Sinanju, gesturing broadly to the wooden crates that lay in the dust. "For in these simple boxes I have brought liberation for your people and doom for the tyrant Maddas. Enough weapons for several surleks. "

  "Alas," said Saluda, lowering his weapon, "I command but a pal these evil days."

  "You have friends? Other commanders?"

  "Many. Even ones in the hated Iraiti Army."

  "This is better than I hoped, for these weapons are of use only against the dreaded Crud missiles of the scum oppressor."

  With a curved knife, Suluda broke open one crate. He squinted at rows of the silver-and-black tubes within.

  "What will these do?" he wondered aloud, taking one in hand.

  "They will break the back of the evil one," promised Chiun. "And even a child may wield them to good use." insulted, Saluda spat, "Then seek you children for your tricks. The men of Kurdistan are warriors."

  "No offense was intended, O Kurd. Your warriors need only use these to write their names in the pages of history."

  Saluda removed the cap. The smell offended his nose. He went over to a rock and inscribed his name. The tip left a moist colorless trail that quickly faded to nothingness.

  "This must be a mighty instrument for writing if it leaves no mark on stone, but inscribes one's name on the pages of history," Saluda muttered.

  "If you are not man enough to wield it," Chiun retorted, "I will find another."

  "Man enough?" Saluda flared. "I will scour the caves and foothills and find you surleks of men who are not afraid of making history!"

  The Master of Sinanju drew himself up with quiet dignity. "Spoken like a true son of the Medes," he intoned. "I have found the Kurd who will cause the Wheel of Destiny to complete a full revolution."

  Chapter 32

  Naseem wore his Iraiti uniform like a hair shirt.

  Hauled away from his village by the Iraiti conscriptors, he was given an ill-fitting uniform in exchange for his fine fringed turban and baggy woolen costume, and an old Enfield rifle with no bullets.

  With this insult of a weapon, he was set to guarding a sand-painted bunker where a great rolling Scud missile launcher was held in readiness.

  But in his back pocket he had a silver tube given to him by a fellow Kurd named Mustafa. His instructions were as simple as they were inexplicable.

  When night fell, Naseem steeled himself to enter the bunker. He was not afraid, for since he was a boy he had heard the Kurdish proverb "The male is born to be slaughtered." If he was killed, this was to be.

  The bunker door was not locked, for easy egress of the launcher on short notice. Naseem simply entered.

  Setting his useless rifle by the door, he slipped up to the launcher and climbed atop the great buff-colored missile which lay flat on its movable rail.

  Lying on his stomach, he uncapped the silver tube and began writing out his name. He wrote large, according to his instructions. He had been told that he would be writing his name in history, and because the world had long ago forgotten the Kurds, rightly called "the orphans of the universe," he wrote very, very big.

  For he knew that all over Irait and Kuran, his Kurdish brothers were doing the very same thi
ng to other Scuds and Iraiti strike aircraft.

  Chapter 33

  President Maddas Hinsein slammed down the field telephone receiver after the 1,785th unanswered ring.

  "That traitor Aboona refuses to answer!" he roared.

  All around the council room, his high command jumped in their seats. This included Vice-President Juniper Jackman and Information Minister Don Cooder, who were experiencing what Maddas had referred to as "orientation."

  Maddas turned to his new information minister, who wore a Maddas Hinsein mustache that had been applied with black shoe polish.

  "Explain this!" he demanded in Arabic.

  "What's he saying?" Cooder asked Jackman nervously.

  "No clue. I'd just start talking, was I you," Jackman said.

  "Well, you see, your grace," Don Cooder began, "as I see it-and we must be careful with our facts here, because events are unfolding too rapidly to assimilate them in coherent sequence . . .

  The foreign minister translated on the fly.

  Maddas received the rambling account with a grim face. Since it did not contradict him, he took no exception. He was used to his ministers talking much but saying little. That is why he always had the council-room TV tuned to CNN-it was his only source of reliable intelligence.

  He pulled the remote from a belt holster, causing most of the room to duck instinctively. The CNN logo came on. The council clambered back into their seats, features dripping cold perspiration.

  They all watched in silence as the foreign minister essayed a running translation while patting his face with a handkerchief.

  "We are thwarted," said Maddas Hinsein, after hearing of the failure to take Hamidi Arabia.

  "A temporary setback," the foreign minister said quickly.

  "Which you will surely overcome, Precious Leader," added the defense minister.

  Maddas nodded.

  "We must devise a new strategy to confound the infidel," he went on unhappily.

  "Your brilliance will prove superior to their base perfidy," said the agriculture minister. "As always."

  Vice-President Jackman leaned over to Don Cooder. "I can't tell what these mutton-munchers are saying, can you?"

  "Shhh!" Cooder hissed. "You want to get us shot?"

  "They won't shoot me. I'm vice-president now. I'm indispensable."

  "Tell it to Dan Quayle."

  That thought gave Iraiti Vice-President Jackman pause.

  "I'm also a personal friend of Louis Farakhan," he pointed out. "That's as good as a free pass in this neck of the desert."

  The voice of Maddas Hinsein intruded on their whispering.

  "We must make a glorious gesture," he announced. "The eyes of the Arab world are on us now. How can we smash the aggressor? Come, come, I must have suggestions."

  "We could send the Renaissance Guard south," the health minister offered, carefully. "If you think we should."

  "Good. And then what?"

  "They must take up the defense of the Maddas Line and our new thirteenth province before the hated aggressor overruns our position."

  "A waste of good soldiers. Have more PPPA conscripts sent to the front. They are like the dinars in my pocket. Of use only when they are being spent. Our best must remain in readiness for the great sheik of struggles to come."

  "We could blow up the oil wells in Kuran," the defense minister suggested.

  "What good would that do?" asked Maddas Hinsein.

  "It would make a wonderful series of explosions. Perhaps if there was no oil in Kuran, the Americans would have no reason to stay and vex us so."

  Maddas Hinsein considered this novel thought at length.

  The man who had ventured the suggestion had put it forth only because he had been put on the spot. He knew that such a deed would infuriate the world. But in a choice between infuriating the world and annoying his Precious Leader, it was no contest. The world was not sitting across the table from him.

  "I will consider this," said Maddas Hinsein. "It is a good idea."

  A servile knock on the door interrupted the next speaker.

  "Come," said Maddas Hinsein.

  A red-bereted Renaissance Guardsman entered. "Precious Leader, we have found an American girl on one of the returning planes. She desires to speak with you."

  "Good. Have her tortured. I will speak with her afterward. "

  "At once, Precious Leader. But she has said that she has a plan to end the war."

  Hearing this, Maddas Hinsein broke out into a bristly smile. He laughed. The laugh grew into a roar, which traveled around the room like insane wildfire.

  "She wishes to end the war and there is no war!" Maddas roared. "She does not understand the proud Iraiti people. We want war! We revel in war. We look forward to war."

  "Yes, we revel in war," chorused the Revolting Command Council, which believed no such thing.

  "She says she is an expert in things nuclear," the guardsman added.

  Maddas Hinsein swallowed his laughter. There were only two words that riveted his attention. The word "nuclear" happened to be one of them. "Torture" was the other.

  "Bring her," he said quickly, his face returning to its natural sober cast.

  The girl was brought in. Her stark optical-print dress made their vision swim, as if they stared at her through a disturbed pond. The yellow ribbon in her hair made Maddas Hinsein frown darkly.

  "Hi, I'm Sky Bluel," she said brightly. "Peace."

  "Uh-oh," said Don Cooder, recognizing the girl.

  The foreign minister stood up. In thick English he asked, "You are a U.S. scientist?" His tone was skeptical.

  "Actually I'm a student at USC," Sky admitted. "But I did grad work at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories-before I got booted out for kinda borrowing nuclear-weapons technology."

  "You seem a mere girl."

  "Physics majors can be girls-I mean, women-too." Sky looked past the foreign minister suddenly. "Hey, I know you! You're that over-thirty TV anchor-pig. You helped me build a neutron bomb that got me into all that trouble. Tell them."

  All eyes turned to Don Cooder.

  "It's true," he said carefully. "I know this gal. She stiffed me. I helped her build a neutron bomb for demonstration purposes and she left town before airtime. We had to show a repeat." He made it sound like a leg amputation.

  Maddas Hinsein interjected himself into this exchange with a gruff question. The foreign minister leaned over to explain the exchange.

  While they huddled, Sky Bluel folded her arms. "For your information," she whispered to Don Cooder, "I was kidnapped. A lot of bad things happened. Palm Springs was almost wiped out. Someone died. And worst of all, I had to leave the country. My parents packed me off to Paris to study."

  "My heart bleeds," said Don Cooder acidly.

  Presently the foreign minister lifted his iron-gray head out of the huddle.

  "You can build a neutron bomb?" he asked.

  "If you got some tritium lying around, some beryllium oxide for the tamper plastique. Oh, yeah, and steel for a combat casing."

  "We do. But why would you do this for Irait? You are an American."

  "That's the groovy part," Sky said excitedly. "The U.S. has nukes all around you, right?"

  "This is true."

  "So I build you a few neutron bombs, and presto-instant balance of power. They can't nuke you and you can't nuke them."

  This kernel of invincible logic was passed on to Maddas Hinsein. His moist brown eyes went to the girl's innocent face. A crafty smile came over his fleshy caramel visage. He whispered in the foreign minister's ear.

  The foreign minister bestowed his most disarming smile on Sky Bluel.

  "Our Precious Leader," he said smoothly, "he sees the wisdom of your point of view. He wishes to know how soon you can build these peace-ensuring devices for us."

  "Oh, a week," said Sky. "Maybe a month. Depends on what I have to work with."

  "I thought you were antinuclear," Don Cooder whispered.

  "I am.
But I'm more antiwar. Listen: No blood for oil! USA out of Hamidi Arabia!" She lowered her voice. "Do I sound like Jane Fonda, or what?"

  "You sound 'or what,' " Don Cooder snapped. "Definitely."

  When Sky Bluel's words were translated, Maddas Hinsein's grin broadened. He clapped his hands loudly. He spoke at great length.

  The foreign minister spoke next.

  "Our Precious Leader has decided to put this to a vote in true democratic fashion. All in favor of delaying further military action in favor of building neutron bombs, say yes."

  "I'm voting no," said Vice-President Jackman.

  "Me too," Don Cooder chimed in. "This is ridiculous."

  "All opposed will be issued service pistols along with one bullet."

  "Why only one?" asked Cooder.

  "Because when one wishes to commit suicide by pistol," he was told, "one bullet is all that is necessary."

  "I vote yes," Cooder said instantly.

  Vice-President Jackman raised an eager hand. "Make that two yeses."

  In point of fact, it was unanimous.

  This impressed Sky Bluel. "Wow! Ho Chi Minh's got nothing on you!"

  As the foreign minister led Sky Bluel from the room, she asked a question in an uncertain voice.

  "That stuff about suicide. That was a joke, right?"

  "In Abominadad, we are always cutting up. I myself often thank Allah for providing us with a sense of humor second to none in the Arab world."

  And the foreign minister smiled like a piranha eyeing legs in the water.

  Chapter 34

  A day passed. Two. Three. A week. Two weeks.

  As the world held its breath, America's industrial might geared up for the military mission destined to go down in the pages of history as Operation Dynamic Eviction.

  An Ogden, Utah, factory went to around-the-clock shifts, turning out flamingo-pink butyl rubber gasproof suits outfitted with what appeared to be corkscrew antennas in the seat area. No one knew why.

  In plants scattered throughout Iowa, Michigan, and elsewhere in America's heartland, specially customized pink gas masks rolled off assembly lines, were packed under the watchful eyes of armed MP's, and then loaded aboard C-5 Galaxy transports for the five-thousand-mile flight to Hamidi Arabia.

  Idle Detroit auto factories received rush orders for unique fiberglass shells that were too big for ordinary stock cars and aerodynamically unsuited for small airplanes-the plant manager's second guess.