Dark Passage

Could people in Mecca or Tehran, he wondered, understand why the West had felt compelled to resort to such extreme measures to protect it's interests and ideas? Could people in the West understand the consequences of the fear generated by this action? Where could these reactions lead but to further misunderstanding. Misunderstanding was the only course available to people who only looked in the mirrors of their own soul.

Hayward turned and looked at the empty seats in the First Class car, then stood and walked back to the Lounge Car. He ordered a scotch and water and talked to the steward there, then turned to walk back to his seat after he dropped a pound note into the steward's tip cup, and there she was. He felt his heart lurch in his chest when he recognized that face, and he stumbled to a halt as she drew near. She seemed to be quite focused on him, and the drink in his hand.

"Rough couple of days, Colonel?" Angela Stuart said.

"You've no idea, Ma'am." He was conscious of his hands beginning to tremble as his eyes lingered on the woman the Financial Times had recently stated had The Most Beautiful Face in British Broadcasting. He thought in a sudden flash how silly that was, but the effect she had on him was unmistakable, and it left him feeling suddenly very unsure of himself - like he was a school boy once again. Innocent, pale green eyes, light red hair, a complexion so fair it caught Hayward by surprise. But it was her eyes he kept coming back to. Luminous pools. Luminous, dewy pools, and they took his breath away. She wasn't tall, far from it, in fact, but she was perfect.

"Feel like talking about it?" she said with something like a sly grin on her cool, alabaster face.

"Not sure what I could tell you, on the record, that is."

"Doesn't have to be for publication, Colonel."

"Name's Deke, Ma'am."

"And mine is Angela." She held out her right hand, and he took it. "What are you having?" she asked while eyeing his scotch.

"Ah! Sorry! Would you care for something?" She smiled and nodded.

They walked back to his seat after they collected her drink, and began talking as soon as they sat in the darkened car, first about the mission he'd flown over Tehran the night before, then about his career, and later, even a little about his family back in Helena, Montana. She was a wonderful listener, he said to himself more than once as he watched her eyes following his mouth as he talked. Though he doubted her sincerity - she was press, after all - he watched empathy and understanding roll across her face while he talked about flying the B-2 and the physical toll it took on both crew and aircraft on such long missions. She was a natural listener, and he soon was talking about the complexity of the operation the president had outlined, and his misgivings about the plan.

"Do you think it can be done?" she asked him after he had said a lot more than he should have.

"Yes, I suppose so. As long as there aren't any other fires to put out."

"What about the Chinese? The mutual defense treaty with Iran? And there's word that the Russians may have entered into a secret treaty with the Iranians as well."

"Sounds kind of like 1914 again. The guns of August, you know? I don't know, really. Why would the Russians and the Chinese run to support the Iranians if it could be shown that they were truly supporting efforts to back terrorist campaigns in Europe and America? Wouldn't they then be complicit in supporting terrorism? What would they gain from that?"

"It gets complicated, doesn't it?" she said with more than a little sadness written on her face. I wonder where all this is going to lead. There are few precedents for this environment."

"Well, I don't know. I don't think God put us here just to let us blow ourselves off the planet. Seems kinda silly to me, you know." He smiled, she smiled, and it was as if they had reached some kind of an understanding. He took a long pull from his scotch and looked at her while she did the same. Her eyes held his, and he felt a stirring in his belly.

Soon, too soon, Hayward thought, the train slowed as it entered King's Cross. The end of the line, he thought, in more ways than one. The end of his time with this beautiful woman. Pity.

"So, Colonel, where are you staying?" Stuart said as she stood and watched as Hayward collected her things from the overhead rack.

"Oh, just some hole in the wall by the embassy. Have to brief some politicos from Washington in the morning. The usual crap, er, excuse me, Ma'am." He smiled again, and even though he was forty three years old he felt himself blushing.

"Could I interest you in a nightcap?" Stuart said. "At my place?"

_______________________________________

Hayward stood at a lectern before members of the House Armed Services Committee and went over the President's operational directive, and the National Security Council document that supported it. There was little here that the congressmen and women didn't already know, but they wanted to hear it all from the man who would be in charge of implementing the operation - they wanted to her that it was in fact a doable plan. None questioned the legitimacy of the plan, as none addressed the possible implications of a nuclear counter-strike against the United States; the only concern in evidence was the operational tempo dictated by the plan, and the necessity to expand the B-2 fleet as a consequence. Hayward found this attitude curious, but he wasn't surprised. Once men reached this level of power and authority, Hayward had long observed, most of these pompous assholes took on an air of invincibility that was truly unnerving.

After the Democratic Party's humiliating defeat in 2008, all opposition to the new Republican majority's ascension to total domination of the American political landscape simply evaporated. Evangelicals - who had long been moving supporters into key positions in the military's service academies - soon controlled the Joint Chiefs and key command structures in all the armed services. The new president was as fundamentalist as one could find in America, and he continued his predecessors habit of having all policy decisions reviewed by religious scholars to see if said policies conformed to "End Times" prophesy. Many religious moderates, which Hayward considered himself to be, grew concerned that the president's policies would lead to a self-fulfilling prophesy. Like President Bush before him, the new president continued to spend money like there was no tomorrow, it was said, simply because he didn't believe in tomorrow. He believed in Armageddon. Congress resumed acting as little more than a rubber-stamp for the increasingly narrow policy initiatives that marked the new administrations conservative agenda, and the domestic economy was now seen by many as teetering on the brink of collapse as budget and trade deficit hit figures that had here-to-for been considered impossible.

This surge in fundamentalism had swept into Europe as a new wave of conservatism had begun to grip the European populace in the aftermath of Islamic bombings in Berlin and Toulouse. As the quagmire in Iraq continued unabated, Islamic hatred of all things western simply exploded, and grew even more violent after the first year of the Palestinian Civil War and the collapse of Lebanon into renewed anarchy. When the Christian world woke to the news that Copenhagen had simply disappeared after a nuclear weapon was detonated there, all eyes looked at the new American President first for solace - then revenge.

Operation Resurgent Glory was the President's response, and reaction from both American and European news organs was universal in it's praise of the plan's daring simplicity; few western pundits, in fact, criticized the plan at all. Universal condemnation, however, blared forth from news outlets in both Asia and Russia, which western observers took as a sure sign of the plans unquestionable soundness.

So, Hayward listened as Congressmen asked questions about the men and material that would be needed to carry out the plan successfully, and he rattled off numbers easily, but sometime during that morning's questioning he drifted away from the numbers and questions; he drifted back into the mysteries of last night, back into Stuart's arms. He brought his hand surreptitiously to his face occasionally, and he could still smell her there on his fingers. He felt a surge of animal pride when he did, and he looked forward to seeing her again that very night.

_________________________________________

Outside of Tehran, Iran

Republican Guards Covert Operations Directorate

Mohammed al-Zaq sat in the waiting room outside the Director's office. He held a briefcase tightly in his hands, so tightly in fact that his hands shook from the unconscious effort to hold the grip so tightly. He felt the need to urinate but dismissed the idea as ludicrous; he had gone not ten minutes before. His nerves were shot, his fingernails had all been chewed off weeks ago, and his stomach burned with an insistent fury that even the best western medication was unable to contain. His eyes ached, and the headache he had suffered from for the past three months simply refused to subside, even when he slept.

The door to the Director's office opened, and al-Zaq jumped at the sound. He stood when the Director's aide summoned him, and he walked inside as steadily as he could. He held his briefcase protectively in front of his groin as he walked in, and sat in the chair indicated by the Director. Al-Zaq looked at maps and figures on the Director's desk; many were either Russian or Chinese, and that struck him as very odd. He sat in silence as the Director finished reading something on his computer, and when the man looked up at him, he saw furies of Hell burning visibly behind his eyes.

"You have the operational plans with you?"

"Yes sir."

"Copenhagen was a success. What makes you think we can pull off an operation of this scale using such a similar operational concept again?"

"Because, as expected, sir, they have not developed a working theory of the weapon's delivery. Without that crucial knowledge, sir, they would have no way of mounting a credible deterrent; even developing a workable means of detection would be almost impossible - even if they knew where to look, and when."

Zaq had been in charge of the Copenhagen operation from inception to completion, and with it's success his stature in the Guards had grown immensely. There was talk he would be promoted to Colonel soon, and this long before the decision had been made to generate contingency plans for an even more ambitious assault on western targets.

The Copenhagen strike had been remarkably simple in both plan and execution, and would have been, in fact and theory, almost impossible for a tipped-off intelligence service to detect. Without such intelligence, the city had perished with absolutely no warning. Not once had al-Zaq considered this when he drew up the plans. The proud Danes had insulted the Prophet, hadn't they. They would reap the whirlwind.

The plan had come to Zaq while on a Protective Services mission to Cannes several years before. Would it not be possible to take a sailboat and place a warhead inside it's lead keel, then sail the boat to the desired target and detonate it? The lead in the keel would conceal any radiation signature from the approaching boat, wouldn't it? One could conceal the boat's entry and detonation by having the boat follow a large ship or ferry into port, thus leading investigators to believe the device had been smuggled in on the larger ship? All material evidence would be destroyed in the explosion, only radiation signatures would remain, and these could - with care - be manipulated to lead investigators to any number of dead ends.

A french sailboat had been acquired and suitably modified, and a professional delivery service engaged to move the boat from Croatia to northern Europe. Once there, three Republican Guardsmen had boarded the vessel and waited until the operational 'go-ahead' was received, then followed an Estonian ferry into Copenhagen early on an April morning.

In the month following the incident, no group or nation had taken responsibility for the attack, and even though Islamic opinion was divided on the affair, word on the streets was that most people in Iran had quietly celebrated the deaths of so many infidels. al-Zaq had been summoned two weeks ago to update basic plan for a much larger strike, and it was this effort he held so tightly in his hands. And now, with the president of the United States having legitimized all of Iran's efforts with his bellicose war-mongering, al-Zaq felt certain that the operational go-ahead was imminent.

"So. What do you make of the American's bravado? Is he a fool?"

"It provides an interesting opportunity, sir. And who can say if he is a fool or not, especially if he suits God's purpose."

"Explain. What opportunity does this present?"

"We launch attacks on their airborne patrols from Syria. The Americans will then rid us of those Sunni parasites once and for all. In the name of Allah, we hit our targets the next day."

"Ah, but doesn't that tip our hand? Won't the infidel then know we had pre-positioned assets prior to the event, prior to their neutralizing Syria . . . and wouldn't that lead them to us?"

"With all due respect, sir, I'm not sure there will be any relevant people in power to ask those questions for days, perhaps weeks. By that time, we and our allies can consolidate our hold over all assets in the region. Western powers will be powerless to coordinate intelligence operations for months, if not years. And without access to resources, their devastated economies will demand that hostilities cease. We can demand they convert to Islam as a concession of our granting them access to oil."

The Director smiled, and al-Zaq suppressed the urge to shiver when he saw the expression on the old man's face. 'Did all men become evil with old age?' he asked himself. "You have the list of targets?"

"Yes, sir." al-Zaq tightly clutched his briefcase unconsciously to his groin again. "Along with Washington and London, the most opportune sites in America are San Diego, Norfolk, New York City, Boston, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. These will devastate their military infrastructure. In Europe: Naples, Marseilles, Toulon, Calais, Ostende, Hamburg and Oslo. Again, these targets will maximize damage to both civilian and military targets. The only question remains: will we have the material on hand to construct the necessary warheads. That is out of my hands." al-Zaq shrugged his shoulders as he looked to his superior for confirmation of his suspicions.

"I have been apprised that we will have twenty such devices, all as before. Your list includes how many targets?"

"Eighteen in all, sir." So the Russians and Chinese were providing the weapons! A devil's bargain, he knew, but an expedient bargain, nonetheless.

"An embarrassment of riches, eh, Mohammed? Perhaps you can come up with two additional targets?"

"Sir. Of course. Or simply send two more boats either to New York or up the Potomac."

"How long to position the assets?"

"From delivery of warheads, Sir, we will need two weeks to make the necessary modifications to the boats. We will move some vessels by container ship to closer position; say another ten days. Weather is a consideration with assets like these, the time of year, hurricanes, typhoons and the like. Perhaps as soon as seventy days after the order is given. When do you anticipate the order will be given, sir?"

The Director looked cooly at his most trusted operative. "Mohammed, we would like to strike them on their Forth of July, or perhaps their Labor Day. The warheads are even now en-route. The order is given."

______________________________________

Langley, Virginia

CIA Headquarters

Ernest Tucker, the freshly minted head of Central Intelligence, had for the past three decades been head of the Tidewater Baptist Conference and Christ The Redeemer University and Law School, but his most relevant political experience had been as the new president's spiritual advisor for more than a decade. Tucker had no prior military or diplomatic experience to speak of - in fact, he had no experience in government at all save for the fact that he had campaigned vigorously for the new President, but he had over the years been a most outspoken critic of secular humanism's conspiracy to take over America. He wanted nothing more than to restore the spiritual to government, to be responsible for creating a real Christian Republic in America, and he had begged the newly elected President to be allowed to serve as either head of the CIA or as Secretary of State. Polling data showed strong interest in a man of the cloth serving at Central Intelligence, and Tucker made his way to Langley soon after the inauguration, and the rubber stamp confirmation hearings that followed

There were only seven Democrats left in Congress, so soundly had they been defeated. Tucker was fond of saying that you reap what you sow. Well, the Godless heathens had sown a bitter harvest indeed.

Like all of the incoming cabinet members and heads of major departments, Tucker led prayer services each morning in the central auditorium of the headquarters in Langley, and those career intelligence officers who failed to attend soon found their careers over, just like those who belonged to 'non-approved' religious denominations found their careers at an abrupt end. It was personally satisfying to Tucker to find so many converts finally seeing the light.

On this particular Monday morning, Tucker was listening to an intelligence briefing concerning the operational readiness of the Israeli Air Force to undertake a mission of utmost importance; the briefing was intended to put the finishing touches on a new National Intelligence Estimate concerning Iran's escalating nuclear collaborations with Russia and China, and Israel's mounting concern that Iran would soon use a nuclear device delivered by Russian made ballistic missile on Tel Aviv. The NIE would be used to justify American involvement in support of an Israeli air strike on Iranian nuclear installations. It was hoped this would pull the Russians and Chinese into the conflict. That would fit 'End Time' prophesy quite well.

"So, if I have this right," Tucker said to the assembled military liaison officers, "our involvement should be limited to providing in-flight refueling of Israeli F-16s, as well as AWACs support. We are still in nominal control of Iraqi airspace, and the Saudis have the only other AWACs aircraft in the region. In order to achieve complete surprise, the Saudi aircraft need to be neutralized; does that about sum it up?"

"Yessir," General Oscar Meyer replied. "As you may well remember, Reverend, with the political isolation of Prince Bandar, we can no longer count on Saudi cooperation with any military plans in the Gulf. Only the Saudi's complete antipathy to Iranian hegemony in the region keep them nominally on our side, and this is becoming a day to day thing. We simply can't count on them any longer; they are developing many new financial partners in the EU and Russia, and we have in direct consequence lost most of our influence in the region. And there is the situation in Iraq."

"The president doesn't care about Iraq, General," Tucker said. "They are no longer in play; we control that area of influence for the time being, and that will be sufficient to our needs. Why shouldn't we take part in the raid more directly?"

"Well, Reverend, the refueling operation is simple. The assets are in place, and the operation can be launched with very little advance notice. And frankly, the Israelis should be able to handle the raid itself on their own. We can then hold reserves over the continental United States to stop any Russian airborne attack. Quite frankly, sir, since the end of the Cold War, they've deteriorated quite a bit. Most opinion in the Pentagon is that they will be unable to mount much of an effort."