The Benghazi Affair: A Parody Novel

by Ward Salud

  It looked like a device tray, but she pressed on the button, which revealed a hologram of the President seated at the Resolute desk. Borrowed from CNN, the hologram technology, she was told, would brief them of their mission.

  Holo-Obama, the blue lighting making him look ethereal, sat seriously behind his desk to begin the mission briefing. “Good evening,” holo-Obama said. “Your mission is to neutralize the Sands of Allah.” Holo-Obama pressed a button on the Resolute desk speakerphone and instantly, his image was replaced by the holo-schematics of the facility itself, a warren of tunnels leading to many different chambers in the underground mountain facility. A bright red dot blinked at the center of the facility, a domelike structure and also, the largest chamber in the complex. “Huma, you and your team, are to head to the Master Control Room. Secure the room and destroy the centrifuges.” The holo-schematic shifted to another chamber off to the right. “Hillary,” the voice of holo-Obama said. “Intelligence indicates President Clinton is held here in this corridor.” The holo-schematic transformed back to the image of holo-Obama. “Good luck,” he said. “And may God bless the United States of America,” he finished as the holo-image flickered off.

  Hillary put the holo-device back into her pantsuit jacket’s inner pocket, and with the wind from the truck’s trajectory whipping her blond hair freely, she looked onward as they ventured deeper into Fordow.

  A moment later, the loading bay came into view. It was a fairly vast chamber with a steel blast-proof door at the center. Two Iranian Revolutionary Guardsman, in green military fatigues, stood guard at the facility.

  The truck quickly pulled up, and thinking it was any other delivery shipment, the guardsmen walked up lackadaisically to the vehicle.

  Hillary had other plans in store for them.

  The first of the guardsmen widened his eyes as he saw Hillary point her SIG Sauer, with a silencer at the tip, directly at him.

  One, two shots was all it took. The bullets made their mark, and the soldiers fell to the floor dead. Hillary and the other DSS agents hopped down from the truck and onto the loading bay.

  As the DSS agents fanned out to secure the perimeter, she scanned the area, gun held high at the ready. So far so good, Hillary thought. There were no other guards.

  The blast door at the center of the chamber was their next target. Past the other loading trucks and pallets of supplies, Hillary and Huma went up to the formidable looking entrance of the Fordow Nuclear Enrichment Facility.

  Huma, who wore form-fitting black tactical gear for the mission, gazed up at the blast door concerned but determined. Hillary did the same.

  “Let’s get through with it,” she finally said.

  They went to their respective spots: Huma at the pronged hand wheel and Hillary to the wall close to her. With everything set, she nodded at her aide to begin, and quickly, Huma turned the hand wheel and pulled at the latch, carefully heaving open the gigantic blast door.

  Open Sesame, Hillary thought, remembering the story of “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” in the Arabian Nights, a book she read back in Maine East High School. She knew, of course, they were in the historical land of Persia not Arabia, but she thought the comparison was apt.

  At last, the blast door was fully open leading to a darkened walled corridor ahead. The rest of the DSS agents gathered by her, and she made a hand gesture, two pronged fingers locked at her eyes, then to them, and finally, to the inside the facility itself.

  They understood, and leading the way, Hillary stepped into the corridor.

  One step was all it took, however.

  As soon as she did so, an ear piercing klaxon blared at the entire facility even as red siren lights spun close to the ceiling of the loading bay. Hillary cringed at the noise, crackling her ears.

  Uh oh, she thought as the klaxon continued to wail. We’re in trouble.

  •••

  The klaxon blared loudly inside the Master Control Room, and #2, Col. Javani, and Alessandra all looked up at the sound, confusion on their faces.

  “What is that?” #2 asked.

  Javani went off to the CCTV console and checked on the bank of monitors. Still, the monitors revealed nothing out of the ordinary. The cameras, both inside and outside of Fordow, continued to display an orderly, largely empty facility.

  “I don’t understand . . .” Javani said.

  #2 shoved him out of the way and checked on the CCTV. Nothing as well, and he gave Javani a confused glance.

  The phone rang.

  #2 pressed a button on the speakerphone . . .

  “The Americans, they’re here! Led by an old blond woman!”

  Upon hearing it, a light of recognition dawned on #2’s face. That could only be one person.

  He went to the monitors again and typed on the console. There, he finally saw the source of his troubles. File footage planted in place of the actual footage. Typing again, he pressed enter. Looking up at the monitor, his mouth dropped at the sight.

  The tranquil scene on the CCTV was now gone, replaced by agents scurrying through the various tunnels of Fordow. Some engaged in firefights, while others had already penetrated deeper into the facility itself. One monitor in particular, had Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin, in grainy white video, hurrying through a tunnel armed with only their SIG Sauers.

  He gritted his teeth at the sight of them.

  “I don’t know how this could be,” Javani said incredulously.

  “Well, we’re obviously under attack,” he said, gritting his teeth. He went over to the computer console and picked up his gun. “Best you arm yourself,” he said coolly.

  Alessandra came up to her lover. “What’s going on?” she asked, almost embracing him.

  “Stay here, my love,” he said as he caressed her cheeks. Then, a devilish sheen intruded into his eyes. “I have a surprise for her . . .”

  She watched him leave her, no doubt to battle Hillary.

  •••

  A Revolutionary Guardsman rounded a corner and pulled out his pistol. The gun fired two shots straight at Hillary.

  “Watch out!” Huma cried out as she pushed her boss out of the way. As they both tumbled to the ground, the bullets barely missed Huma, who pointed her own SIG Sauer and fired back. Huma’s bullets hit their mark. The four shots riddled the guardsman, and then, his life snuffed out, he crumpled to the floor.

  On the ground beside her, her boss breathed hard. “Thanks,” she said to her.

  Huma didn’t think that merited any thanks. She was only doing her duty after all.

  She picked herself up and helped her boss up as well, and soon, they were on the move again.

  They went down a long corridor, Fordow apparently having a multitude of them, until finally the came upon a split. She knew this was the end of the road for this leg of the mission.

  Ahead, the split led in three directions while Hillary once more got the holo-device. The press of a button revealed the holo-schematics of the Fordow facility once more. A bright red dot pulsated in the middle of the facility and another one at another end where the detention area was located.

  Huma knew as well they were going to split, but apprehension still marked her youthful face, obviously reluctant to leave her boss alone in a hostile area.

  “Go,” Hillary commanded, wiping sweat from her forehead. The facility was stuffy with not a lot of ventilation. NORAD this wasn’t. “Disable the bomb,” she said. “I have to rescue Bill.”

  Huma said nothing at first, clearly wanting to say something, but finally, she nodded. “Be safe,” she said to her boss.

  Holding her gun close, Huma made her way down the central corridor and left her boss. She didn’t want to do it, but if anyone can save President Clinton, it was Mrs. Clinton.

  Down the corridor, she went until she came upon a spartan stairwell. It was tucked in the corner, but as soon as she did so, she drew her gun in front of her.

  On the other side of the SIG Sauer, a frightened Iranian scientist, a la
b coated young man in his 30’s who had ran up the stairs, reeled back from the weapon and raised his hands up in the air. “Don’t shoot,” he pleaded. “Don’t shoot.” A bead of sweat came down the side of his forehead.

  Upon seeing him, Huma lowered her weapon. She wasn’t a cold blooded killer even if the scientist did most likely work in the Iranian nuclear program. She only gestured with her gun, telling him to leave.

  The grateful scientist bowed his head and scurried past her. Huma looked up again at the stairwell, she shouldn’t be far off—

  “Die!” a voice cried out.

  Huma sensed the impending attack. The duplicitous scientist had apparently hidden a knife in his lab coat, and holding it high in the air, he lunged at her.

  Her quick reflexes saved her life. She raised her Sig Sauer and fired a couple of shots, which made their mark on the unlucky scientist. Blood spurted on the lab coat at the entry wounds, and with his life extinguished, he thudded to the floor face down and dead.

  Huma took a moment to collect herself. That was close, she thought, sometimes, she was entirely too trusting. She pressed on, though, and climbed the stairwell. It should be a straight shot then to the Master Control Room.

  At the top of the stairs, she finally saw her destination. The corridor led straight to the centrifuge hall where the Master Control Room was located. Already, she could hear fighting and gunfire . . . as well as the crying shouts of dying men.

  Gripping her gun, she ran down the corridor to join the battle. Running past the enclosure, she found the Centrifuge Hall, a vast chamber whose ceilings seemed to reach all the way to the top of the carved mountain, in chaos. Rangers and Revolutionary Guardsman engaged in firefights, some even in hand to hand combat even as the metallic cylindrical centrifuges, standing in rows as if in military formation, continued to spin dizzyingly on the premises. Bodies of both friend and foe lay in all directions with signs of grenade and bomb blasts evident on certain sections of the chamber. There was something else as well.

  Female warriors, clad head to toe in form-fitting cloth with only a slit opening for their eyes, joined the fight as well. Blade in hand, they fought the Rangers as ferociously and fanatically as the men with them.

  Huma knew who they were: an elite corps of female warriors in the Iranian army. They didn’t have a name, only known to the West as the female ninja assassins of Iran.

  Huma looked on ahead. A main pathway led to a set of stairs and into the nerve center, a circular room with curved windows like a watchtower. There, she could sabotage the main computers and put an end to the Sands of Allah.

  Not waiting any longer, Huma ran down the prescribed pathway, two yellow lines marking its extremities, trying to dodge the fighting as best she could. She fired two shots at two fleeting forms of Iranians, before a form shrieked at her. From out of the centrifuge line, two female Iranian ninjas cried out and swung their sabers.

  Huma barely had time to dodge the attack sending her into the centrifuge line itself. The female ninja followed her in swinging her deadly blade. Huma weaved in and out of the spinning centrifuges, trying to escape the blade. She tried to keep a clear shot, but the spinning centrifuges and the chaos all around—

  Another female ninja lunged at her, but Huma caught her attack. Taking the attacker, who had a knife, by the shoulder, she fell back on the ground and with the lift of her feet, she threw the attacker over into the air and right onto a spinning centrifuge. She shrieked as her robe caught on the centrifuge and spun her first onto a second and then a third centrifuge, each time slamming her head onto the metal with a crunch and not ending her shrieks until the centrifuge itself stopped spinning from the extra weight.

  The two female ninjas tried to take advantage of the situation, but Huma caught them. As they lunged at her, sabers raised up, she raised her SIG Sauer and fired at the both of them.

  The bullets found their mark. In mid-lunge, blood spurted from the heads of the two ninjas, sending both of their bodies crashing to the floor and landing close to her feet.

  She didn’t have time to savor her victory. The sound of an explosion boomed somewhere in the facility, telling her to keep moving. She quickly left the dead bodies and climbed up the stairwell towards the Master Control Room, passing by the bodies of Revolutionary Guardsman and a few Army Rangers who bravely tried to breach the nerve center.

  The door was already open as she ran inside. To her surprise, upon making it to the Master Control Room, she found the place deserted.

  Only a computer console greeted her: a unified workstation stretching from the nearest corner, which looked up at a bank of monitors, and stretching to the far end where a window overlooked the centrifuges in the hall below.

  She thanked her luck and hurriedly, went up to the console on the far corner. Working quickly, she took out a flash drive, slid out the USB plug, and put it into the USB port of the computer console. The virus program stored inside the flash drive soon began to upload on a monitor embedded onto the console itself.

  Come on, come on, she thought. As part of her mission, the virus program in the flash drive would hijack the Fordow computer system allowing her to sabotage the facility.

  The upload meter finally neared its completion, and upon doing so, the monitor read:

  INPUT COMMAND

  She wasn’t much of a computer whiz, but because of the briefing, she knew what to do. On the keyboard, she typed:

  COMMENCE SCHEHERAZADE PROTOCOL

  The input worked. It accepted the command, and the monitor now read:

  UPLOAD COMMENCING . . .

  Huma breathed in. Peering over the window, she checked on the centrifuges below. If the virus worked, the centrifuges, laid out in rows, should spin out of control denying the needed enriched uranium for the tsunami bomb.

  She peered at the computer monitor where a bar inched along indicating its progress. She concentrated so hard on it as though she was helping it along and willing it to go faster.

  Unbeknownst to her, the door to the Master Control Room swung slowly, revealing a concealed Javani. The colonel raised his gun methodically, straight at the unsuspecting Huma.

  •••

  The heat of Iran caused sweat to trail down Hillary’s forehead and onto the collars of her battle pantsuit, but with SIG Sauer in hand, she pressed on through the spartan corridors of the Fordow facility. Heat signatures, she thought, they’d pinpointed heat signatures at this section of the facility. They didn’t need to tell her what they all suspected. This was most likely where they were holding Bill.

  Breaching the corridors was no easy task. Every corner had its dangers, and she had already gone through some near misses. The Revolutionary Guard were as fanatical as ever, but fortunately, her training, under the watchful guidance of her mentor, Madeleine Albright, saved her on many occasions.

  A voice came in through her earpiece. “Madame Secretary?” an unsure voice asked.

  Hillary almost stopped running through the corridors. The voice was unexpected. “Who is this?” she asked. “Where’s Philippe?”

  “Um, it’s um.”

  Another voice cut in. “This is Nick Merrill,” Philippe said. “He’s my replacement.”

  Hillary almost forgot. With her exit at State, that meant members of Hillaryland planned theirs as well, though they were sworn to secrecy of her covert activities. Philippe already told her of his plans for Beacon Global Strategies, a consulting company. That’s the way it was, she thought still pressing on and keeping an eye out for any danger through the darkened corridors. The overhead lights were dimmer here, it seemed, and some already stopped working.

  “Glad to have you aboard, Nick,” she said. She wanted to say some words to Philippe about missing him, but he already knew. Of that she was sure.

  In the earpiece, Nick cleared his throat. “It’s my honor, Madame Secretary.”

  “Please,” she said back. “Call me Hill—”

  She slowed to a stop at the end of the corrido
r that trailed at both sides. It looked much like an office corridor with doors leading into unmarked rooms, if a bit dated like much of Iranian architecture.

  Then, her ears pricked up as giggles . . . from women came from one of the rooms. She stepped tentatively towards the side.

  “Oh, Mr. President,” an accented woman’s voice said. “That is a big stick you’re carrying.” As soon as the voice said it, giggles came from inside the room.

  Then, she heard someone. A deep, charming laugh. It could only come from one person.

  Hillary gulped, and her face flushed hot. Her husband with other women. Ever since Monica, he swore he would never do it again, but the fear, it never really goes away. The fears with Bill . . .

  Gripping her gun, she headed towards the voices. She had a mission to do.

  The door opened, and Hillary pointed her gun at an unexpected sight. Inside the nondescript room, veiled faces, all crowded together, looked back at her in alarm as they were seated close together in chairs. Bill was at the head, pointing a meter stick at a wheeled chalkboard, an amateur map in chalk of the United States scrawled upon it.

  Hillary didn’t know what to expect, and unlike her, she dropped her guard. Any one of the female ninjas could have attacked her, but they didn’t. They all merely gazed at one another. She tried to say something, but nothing came out. It felt like sand crawled up her throat preventing her to speak.

  The silver haired president broke the silence with a charming laugh. “Hey Hillary,” he said with a Southern drawl. “Just showing these young ladies about my hometown of Hope, Arkansas,” he said, still pointing the meter stick up to the state of Arkansas in the middle of the crudely drawn map of America.

  The shock finally wore off. She was expecting the worst: that he had strayed again like other times before. Try as she may, tears stung her eyes. “Oh, Bill,” she said, heading towards her husband.

  Bill embraced her, and soon, she was engulfed in his arms. He had always been stronger than her, contrary to their reputations. “Oh, Bill,” she repeated.