Original Work Doubledealer

Desperate writer needing comments...

 

Chris:
your premise is a good one, but probably set too far in the future based on events already occurring in Europe and here in the States. A new Army manual is being published that states that soldiers cannot criticise the Taliban or pedophilia because of who it might upset. "We have met the enemy and it is us" as the cartoon character Pogo once said.

 

I hope you're wrong. I doubt you are.

Chris

 

Chapter Nineteen



Corsica looms large in French history. It was the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte (and Christopher Columbus), but it managed to maintain a semi-autonomy that I could only admire. The local government – it was still tied to France, but it had managed to claim internal autonomy – was strongly nationalistic and had placed heavy limitations on immigration for anyone who didn't have strong ties to France. Most of the newcomers had served in the French Army – or the Foreign Legion – and they backed the autonomous government to the hilt. Only nine percent of the population was Arab and it was falling every year.



I hadn't realised that the DST operated an airbase on the island, but it shouldn't really have surprised me. Solenzara Air Base had actually been built by the United States and turned over to the French Government after World War Two, who had used it as a front-line airbase until budget cuts had forced them to decommission it. Officially, the base belonged to the Marquis – a French mercenary group – but apparently they were secretly backed by the DST. I wondered if Langley knew; the Marquis had done work for the CIA in the past, as well as supplying troops to help occupy Iran and Pakistan.



“They are officially unconnected with us,” Éclair assured me. “In theory, none of them can go back to France without being arrested for various charges – the most minor being desertion from the army. They are certainly not considered part of the military, even though they draw most of their recruits from soldiers we were forced to let go.”



The airbase was smaller than I had expected, but it was clearly kept in good order. These days, mercenary business was big business and, despite public protests, governments often coddled mercenary organisations because they brought in money. They also provided a reserve for the day the country might have to go to war, which might be sooner rather than later in Corsica’s case. The nationalists had already determined that they would fight to prevent an Islamist government from taking over the island. I suspected that they were already forging covert links with the US.



There were some international agreements covering the use of mercenaries, but they were largely ignored. As we drove onto the airbase, I saw a handful of small tanks, armoured jeeps and a small squadron of medium-sized transport aircraft. I’d had enough experience while working in Pakistan to know that a well-trained military unit could pack up and move itself halfway around the world in a matter of hours; if the Marquis had been based on the French Foreign Legion, they’d probably have the same ability. The American Foreign Legion was far more about holding ground after the regular troops had taken it.



We parked outside the control tower, where we were escorted into the building and searched – not gently – before the guards finally took us up a flight of stairs and into a small office. A single man was standing in front of a table, waiting for us. Éclair nodded to him and he nodded back, tapping the table meaningfully. It was strewn with maps of Algeria, with the terrorist training camp encircled in red.



“Well,” he said, in English. “You do have a habit of bringing your problems to us.”



“Charles, this is Pierre Lesage,” Éclair said. “Formally a Major General in EUROFOR.”



I looked up, impressed. Very few French officers had ever earned the admiration of their American counterparts, but Lesage was a legend. He’d commanded the EUROFOR mission to the Sudan charged with preventing genocide – and, when politicians had made it impossible for him to actually carry out his mission without fighting, he’d ignored his orders and led his multinational force in an attack on the terrorists who were slaughtering large parts of the population. They’d been so successful that the killings had stopped for nearly a year – which hadn't been enough to save his career. In an orgy of breast-beating over the sheer number of enemy casualties, EUROFOR had been forced to dismiss him. He’d ended up as leader of the Marquis. I rather doubted that was a coincidence.



Radical Islamists – and equally radical Christians, and Jews – wanted to ban teaching evolution in schools. One look at Lesage and they would have known that evolution was beyond questioning. He was a hulky ape-like man, with hair cropped close to his skull and a face that managed to seem almost immobile. I was reminded of my first Drill Instructor, who had seemed to be nothing less than a gym teacher from hell.



“So you want us to clean up your mess,” Lesage said, when Éclair had finished explaining what needed to be done. “You want us to take out this terrorist camp, in the middle of a very unfriendly country ...”



He grinned. “You do realise that they might blame France for this?”



“They blame us for everything,” Éclair pointed out, rudely. “Their civil war? Our fault. The famine caused by poor government? Our fault. The fact that the educated part of their population is leaving at high speed? Our fault. Fuck them.”



“They might start launching missiles,” Lesage reminded him. “A Scud can get across the sea and into the South of France ...”



“Which might convince the government to start taking certain issues seriously,” Éclair said. I wondered if he’d calculated that there was a good chance that any retaliatory missiles would come down in Islamic neighbourhoods. The Scud is not known for being very accurate. “However, we may well be completely out of time.”



“You were out of time years ago,” Lesage said. He looked down at the map. “How much? In Dollars, not Euros. How much?”



“Mercenary,” Éclair said. “Assuming you pull off the operation successfully, we will meet your price.”



“Put it in escrow in Switzerland,” Lesage ordered. “Not that I don’t trust you, but ...”



“I understand,” Éclair said tightly. If someone higher up caught wind of the transaction before it was too late, they might try to block it. Pissing off armed mercenaries didn't strike me as a very good idea, but politicians were often unaware of such details. If the French Government had been more aware of the realities of life, they might not have jumped headlong into such a black hole. “It shall be done.”



“Been prepping since you sent us the message,” Lesage said, changing the subject. “Destroying the camp would be easy; actually getting in on the ground is going to be a bitch, as you Americans say.” He gave me a look, indicating that my disguise wasn't fooling him. But then, I hadn't really been trying. “Algeria’s ATC network is shot to hell – their controllers deserted after the Islamists took power – but they might notice a flight of aircraft heading inland.”



He scowled. “There aren't many obvious defences around the camp, but that doesn't mean that there aren't any,” he added. “The US claims that several thousand MANPADS remain unaccounted for after Pakistan – they could all be here. Or they might have moved a few mobile air defence systems to the camp and merely kept them under cover until they were needed. Dropping in through parachute isn't likely to end well, even if we go in at night.”



Éclair scowled “Are you saying that it is impossible?”



“I’m just saying that it is going to be tough,” Lesage said, dryly. “Stop panicking like a politician and pay attention.” He tapped the map. “There's a small abandoned airbase here, right on the edge of the desert. It used to serve as a refuelling hub for military aircraft, so it should be able to take our transports. We get in there, deploy our forces and then attack towards the terrorist camp. It will be risky, but we can do it. Once the operation is complete, we pull out the same way.”



He looked over at Lesage, and then at me. “I take it there’s no hope of support?”



I nodded, grimly. There was a carrier near Malta that had enough punch to slaughter the entire Algerian Air Force in minutes, if they dared take to the sky to fight. But Washington’s orders tied their hands. The carrier wouldn't be allowed to engage unless she was fired upon first. Even the French Air Force would have been welcome, except they too had their hands tied. They couldn't do anything to save their country.



“The Algerians have most of their army deployed in the cities, or along the coastline,” Lesage said, studying the map. “It will take them some time to react to our incursion, assuming that they find out about us the moment we attack the terrorist base. The satellite pictures certainly imply they’re not providing official protection, but they will try to respond.”



“Yeah,” I muttered. Pakistan had been humiliated when Navy SEALs had entered their territory, shot Osama Bin Laden and departed, without any interference from Pakistani troops. And that had merely been the first in a series of increasingly dramatic raids against terrorist bases they’d thought were safe. “I can see that.”



Éclair scowled. “And if that happens, will you engage?”



“I’d prefer not to get into a shooting match,” Lesage said. “But I won’t surrender my men either. I trust that is understood?”



I nodded. Mercenaries were particularly despised by terrorists and governments on the receiving end of their attentions. They fought for money, after all. If captured, none of Lesage’s men could hope for mercy – and France wouldn't lift a finger to save them. They were, after all, expendable. Algeria would torture them, force them to make full confessions, then behead the poor bastards in public. No doubt the show would distract their public from their woes for a few days.



“We want the head bastard alive, if possible,” I said. I knew that it might not be possible, something that politicians often missed. War is a democracy; the enemy gets a vote. Even a perfectly-planned mission can go to hell in an heartbeat if the enemy does something unexpected. “And we need the nukes.”



Lesage gave me a sharp look. “Are you sure they’re there?”



“No,” I admitted. “I just think that camp is a likely place for some of them to be concealed.”



Hell, we weren't even sure how many nukes had left Pakistan. The CIA’s best guess was ten, but if there had only been eight ... we’d be wasting our time looking for imaginary weapons. And if there had actually been eleven, one of them might slip past us unnoticed. The Pakistani records had been a mess before we'd invaded and their scientists had tried to destroy them.



The Pakistanis had wormed their way into Algeria’s government. Could it be that they’d used the nukes as bargaining chips?



“We shall attempt to take prisoners,” Lesage said. “You should know, however, that we will only have limited room on the aircraft. We will only be able to take a handful of prisoners with us.”



I caught the unspoken subtext and scowled. We could take a few of the training officers, and the record keepers, but not all of the young men who were trained in terrorism. If we took them prisoner, we would have to let them go – or kill them. They were training to be terrorists, training to slaughter unarmed and helpless civilians, yet they were dupes. Did they really deserve to die?



Maybe not, but there was no choice. We couldn't let them live.



“Understood,” I said. Even military aircraft have problems flying when overweight. “I would like to take out the girls, if possible.”



Lesage leaned forward. “Are you willing to sacrifice the chance to gain intelligence from terrorist masterminds in order to save those poor bitches?”



I lowered my eyes, damning myself. “No,” I said. “But if we can ...”



“If we can, we will,” Lesage assured me. “Are you going to be coming with us?”



“Yes,” I said, simply. I was the only person with any first-hand experience of the terrorist camp. “I am going to be coming with you.”



“You’ll be staying in the rear,” Lesage ordered. “The quartermaster will outfit you with body armour, a weapon and ammunition. If you cause problems during the operation, you will be forcibly restrained. I don’t need to grovel in front of intelligence officers now.”



“He means it,” Éclair said. “Just follow orders when on the ground.”



I flushed. I’d operated with SEALs, Marines and even a detachment of British Pathfinders, back before I’d formally left the CIA. Few soldiers are ever happy having an intelligence officer looking over their shoulder, even one who had actually been given some training (and was therefore not a complete ignorant). The Pathfinders had actually flown me high over Iran in a stealthed aircraft, then we’d parachuted into the country. It had been nightmarish; we'd jumped from so high that we’d needed special equipment to survive the experience.



“I know how to follow orders,” I said, tartly.



“Glad to hear it,” Lesage said. He made a show of looking at his watch. “We depart in five hours, which should allow us to get over Algeria in darkness. Assuming that everything goes according to plan, we should be able to complete the entire operation and get out before first light.”



“Hopefully,” I agreed.



Western armies were trained and equipped to fight at night. Middle Eastern ones had no such training and very little equipment, even the ones who had spent billions of their oil dollars on military equipment. If the Algerians were smart, they wouldn't do anything until daylight, allowing us a chance to withdraw without interference. The locals wouldn't say too much about a terrorist camp, particularly if they didn't know who had carried out the hit, but they’d bitch and moan about any of their soldiers who got shot up by the intruding force.



“Report to the quartermaster in thirty minutes,” Lesage said. “One of my aides will show you the way.”



He marched out of the door, leaving Éclair and I alone.



“I’m going to have to try to organise something,” Éclair said, bluntly. “There are soldiers, even senior officers, who are still loyal to France. Maybe, just maybe, I can put together a response to the planned coup.”



“Or launch one yourself first,” I said. It wouldn't be easy. Most politicians were either on the other side or useful idiots, as far as Victor was concerned. The force trying to save France would find it harder to convince the rest of the country of its legitimacy. “What about the nukes?”



“They are protected by a special unit,” Éclair said. “They should be safe, for the moment.”



I hoped he was right. Pakistani missiles hadn't been anything to write home about – and their warheads were big, clunky things. French nukes, on the other hand, were modern and some of them were small enough to fit in a briefcase. And French missiles could reach America just as easily as they could reach Moscow. There was an ABM network set up to protect the United States, but no one knew for sure just how effective it would be against modern missiles. It had never really been tested.



“It’s the dog that didn't bark that worries me,” Éclair admitted. “There was no riot in the suburbs.”



“Yeah,” I agreed. There had been a shootout in the middle of an ethnic area. If the French Arabs had rioted over something as minor as a police officer walking through the community, there should have been a massive explosion after Victor and I had our little shootout. But there hadn't been more than a handful of tiny incidents, which was worrying as hell. Someone had evidently slammed the brakes on, hard. I found it ominous. “Do you have other contingency plans?”



“A handful,” Éclair admitted. “But right now, half the police is firmly in their hands. We may lose control of most of the cities fairly quickly, once the shit hits the fan.”



I wondered what Victor was thinking, wherever he was. He had to know that at least part of his plan had been compromised, which meant that he might be completely exposed. Even if the police were under his control, he might still be unaware of someone else’s plan to deal with him – the DST, for example. The smart thing to do would be to pull in his horns and wait for a year or two before resuming operations. But would his employers allow him to wait?



But who were his real employers?



“I should have joined the Marines,” I muttered, as I found myself tossing possibilities around and around in my head. “Everything is so much simpler on an open battlefield.”



“How true,” Éclair agreed, dryly. “I will go back to France and start putting together a counter-conspiracy. And if we are lucky, we will remain undetected until we are ready to strike.”



I grimaced. One mistake, one person brought into their confidence who was already reporting to different masters, and Éclair would be doomed. They’d have him assassinated, just like several other politicians, military officers and intelligence agents had died over the last two years. Éclair had told me that the DST had been blocked from investigating the murders, leaving it in the hands of the police. And the police had been subverted right from the start.



“Good luck,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder. At least he was trying to fight, unlike so many others. The US would have welcomed Éclair, if only so the CIA could drain him of everything he knew. “And we will try to put a spanner in their works.”



“Victor is involved,” Éclair pointed out. “Somehow, I don’t think it will be so simple.”



We shook hands, then I went to find the quartermaster. It wouldn't be long before we left the base and headed into a very hot zone. And I needed to be there.



And if we get our hands on the Butcher, I thought, in the privacy of my own head, we would have something to bargain with ...

 

Chapter Twenty

There is an unwritten law about military transport aircraft, at least in my experience. They are invariably uncomfortable, noisy and smelly, at least on the inside. Even the most advanced transport aircraft are uncomfortable, worse than economy-class flights on Third World airlines. I sat on the rack, one hand clutching my rifle, praying that the flight would be over soon. Some of the soldiers had been eyeing me, convinced that I was going to throw up. I certainly felt like it.

The Marquis owned nine medium transports and five heavily modified AC-130 Spectre III gunships, purchased from the United States. I’d worked with Spectres before and knew how skilled crews could use them to provide Close Air Support at very close ranges for troops on the ground. Once the USAF fighter pilot mafia had been broken in the wake of San Francisco, dozens more had been ordered and rushed into service. Terrorists hated them more than they hated the Apache helicopters, which was true praise. I wouldn't have given a rusty cent for the chances of any Spectre crew who fell into their hands.

I forced myself to relax, breathing deeply to calm my nerves. If there had been a set of portholes ... but no, that would have been dangerous on a military aircraft. Our universe had shrunk to the interior of the aircraft’s cabin, even as we headed low over the Algerian coastline and deeper into Algeria. My companions knew that they were under sentence of death if they were ever caught in this country. So was I, although for different reasons. If there had been time to obtain a disguise ...

The intercom crackled into life. “No radar pings,” a voice said. “We appear to be clear.”

I heard a sigh of relief running through the cabin. Like most nations, Algeria only maintained radar stations along its borders, which meant that once we were inland, we would vanish from their sensors. Civilian aircraft used IFF beacons to remain visible; intruding mercenary aircraft, without such beacons, might as well be invisible. It was lax, at least partly why the hijackers succeeded as well as they did on 9/11, but Algeria hadn't been able to modify its ATC network. Their country simply couldn't afford it.

Maybe Langley is watching, I thought, remembering the chain of satellites high over the Middle East. The French aircraft weren't designed to be truly stealthy – and even if they were, satellite optical sensors might well pick them up anyway. I wonder what they make of it.

A dull rumble ran through the aircraft as the craft altered course. “Thirty minutes,” someone said, shortly. Thirty minutes until we were on the ground, unless the advance party ordered us to break off and retreat. I found myself praying that the five-man team on the ground didn't run into any serious trouble. Five men weren't enough to deal with more than a handful of enemy soldiers.

Time ticked away. It was nearly twenty minutes before the intercom buzzed again. “The airfield is clear,” it said. I breathed a second sigh of relief and I wasn't the only one. Trying to assault an airport by landing a transport on the runway could be extremely dangerous. “Make your final checks now.”

I checked the M-16 I’d been given, then my ammunition and grenades. The body armour was the latest from the United States, capable of taking a shot to the chest and leaving its wearer with nothing more than a nasty bruise. It wasn't perfect – parts of my skin were exposed – but it was much better than anything available to the terrorists. Or so I hoped. They’d have access to SWAT team armouries in France ...

The aircraft tilted and then began to descent sharply. If we had been tracked on radar, it would have looked as if we’d crashed, or so I’d been told. Flying low is a simple way to evade radar contact, even if it did have its dangers. I’d heard of one pilot in Iran who’d crashed his aircraft into a mountain while trying to fly too low. The idiot hadn't kept his eye on the terrain-monitoring system.

“Here we go,” I heard someone mutter, as the wheels came down. “Brace yourselves ...”

We hit the runway and skidded down it, the aircraft shaking so badly that I was convinced that the landing wheels were about to break and we’d pancake into the ground. Instead, the aircraft came to a halt and the rear doors crackled open. A pair of Sergeants barked orders and the men got to their feet, running out of the aircraft and away into the shadows. If someone had the airfield under observation, perhaps with a pair of mortars zeroed in, the aircraft would become death traps.

Three of the transports had disgorged a handful of LAVs, carrying machine guns and a handful of missile launchers. I watched as the drivers drove out to the edge of the airfield, followed rapidly by the soldiers as their commanders sorted them out into units. As always, the first part of any military operation was absolute confusion. Things would settle down as we advanced on the terrorist base.

A hand caught my shoulder and pushed me towards the rear of the line. “Stay there,” he grunted. A handful of mercenaries had been introduced to me as Sensitive Site Exploitation Specialists, a military speciality that had entered the lexicon while terrorist-hunting in Afghanistan. Their job was to remove all the paperwork, hard drives and other useful equipment from the terrorist base and analyse it, allowing follow-up raids to nab other terrorists. I didn't know what the DST thought they could do with the evidence – they’d have to tell their political superiors where it came from – but I had a feeling that Langley would be pleased to accept it. The twilight world of intelligence gathering makes for strange bedfellows.

It was a bare two miles to the terrorist camp, an easy march for soldiers who had gone much further in training, while carrying much more. Even the rather nerdish SSE officers had no problems keeping up with the infantry, leaving me silently grateful for the running and marching I’d done at the terrorist camp. It’s far too easy to lose one’s physical condition if one doesn't exercise and eat properly.

The desert was thoroughly eerie, even compared to Pakistan. I could see a faint glow in the distance, where Oran lay under the horizon. I’d been worried about encountering wandering tribesmen or even soldiers on patrol – both had happened during previous operations, blowing their cover – but we encountered no one. Perhaps they saw the LAVs and decided that we were soldiers on exercise, or perhaps they simply didn't dare do anything. There had been a young boy in Afghanistan who had alerted his elders to a small force of American soldiers on a covert reconnaissance mission. The Taliban had promptly killed him for having contact with American infidels.

I looked up at the moon as it rose high overhead, casting a silvery glow over the land. There were Americans – and Japanese, and Chinese – bases there now, trying to mine ME3 to escape the crippling oil shortage. I had heard rumours that the government was planning to do much more with outer space in the next few years, including placing factories in orbit to escape the threat of terrorist attacks. Even the nastiest missile produced by a rogue state wouldn't be able to reach the moon. And besides, if it was even remotely possible, we would shoot it down before it left the atmosphere. There was no tolerance for missile firings these days.

Maybe that’s how it will all end, I thought, grimly. The smart guys will go to orbit and the barbarians will inherit the earth.

The thought wasn't too comforting. I’d had an elderly aunt who had been a devout Christian and she'd been fond of proclaiming that the meek will inherit the Earth. But all of my life had taught me that Heinlein was right; the meek would indeed inherit the Earth, in little plots, three by six. What would happen if civilisation moved to space and left Earth to collapse into anarchy? I knew people who would happily run if there was somewhere to run to.

I pushed the thought aside as the column came to a halt. The terrorist training camp was just beyond the next ridge. I heard subvocalised comments through the command network as the recon teams slipped closer, confirming that there were no roving patrols on the outside of the fence. It was rather sloppy, to say the least, although roving patrols might well have drawn the attention of American observers. At a whispered command from Lesage, I crawled forward and joined him in position to peer at the camp. Even in semi-darkness, I could make out buildings and facilities I remembered. And there were terrorist recruits being trained under brilliant lights. No doubt their sleeping patterns were being destroyed to help with the brainwashing. My cover story had said that I’d had the same treatment in Kuala Lumpur.

I’d never been given much of a chance to see the camp’s outer defences. There were two fences, both marred at intervals with observation towers, just like a prison camp. I had no problem seeing that the machine guns mounted on the towers could be easily swung around to point into the camp, ready to gun down recruits who had a fit of common sense and decided to leave the camp. The internet had hailed a number of dead recruits as martyrs who had died bravely, but when the analysts had compared notes they’d deduced that the dead had tried to leave a terrorist camp and go home. It shouldn't have surprised them that you couldn't just send in a resignation letter to the terrorist masterminds.

Besides, I knew, they'd seen too much to be trusted to keep their mouths shut.

I lay still as Lesage muttered orders, deploying his forces. We’d have to take out the towers first, then get forward and knock down the fence, charging right into the middle of the camp. The recruits who were being trained would be chopped apart as soon as the fighting started, while the ones who were sleeping in their barracks would hopefully remain penned up there until it was too late to resist. But the most important task was capturing the bunker before it could be sealed. There was no way to know if there was a second exit, one that came up several miles from the camp. If I’d been planning an emergency bunker, that was exactly what I would have done.

“Go,” Lesage muttered.

The mercenaries had set up mortars and antitank weapons in position to hit the towers. Now they opened fire, launching rockets towards the manned defences. The missiles had been designed to burn through tanks; they had no problems in utterly destroying the towers before the guards even knew that they were under attack. HE rounds exploded amidst the fences, blowing it to pieces and detonating a handful of mines that had been placed between the two walls of wire. I watched the explosions billow up around the camp and smiled. They’d planted too many landmines for their own good.

I looked back at the recruits. They seemed utterly stunned, unsure of what to do as the LAVs moved forwards and the snipers opened fire, picking off the trainers with lethal accuracy. I winced as a mortar round landed in the middle of one group of recruits, blowing them to bloody chunks, convincing many others that they needed to run. Several of them started to run towards their barracks, much to my silent amusement; the remainder, perhaps smarter, headed towards the rear of the camp. But we appeared to be attacking from all directions.

“Got a group of armed men emerging from building four,” one of the observers said, through the command network. “At least twenty men, carrying AK-47s. Nothing larger as far as I can see.”

“LAV-2 and LAV-5, deal with them,” Lesage ordered. His soldiers could have handled them easily, but there was no point in taking unnecessary risks. “And keep an eye out for the Pakistanis. They won't be so dumb.”

I nodded. The LAV machine guns made short work of the first sally, quick bursts of machine gun fire almost vaporising them before they could get a shot off. Several other armed men appeared out of another building, took one look and high-tailed it away. The snipers promptly shot them in the back and left their bodies to bleed out on the dusty ground.

The LAVs kept advancing forward, activating their loudspeakers. “GET DOWN ON THE GROUND, THROW ALL WEAPONS AWAY, HANDS ON YOUR HEADS,” the recorded message bellowed out, first in Arabic and then in Berber. For good measure, it was repeated in English and Urdu. “IF YOU SURRENDER, YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED!”

The enemy didn't seem to want to surrender. They’d been caught by surprise, but they were still trying to fight. One of the barracks seemed to have been designed as a strongpoint, with multiple murder holes for the Pakistanis to fire RPGs out towards the LAVs. One of the LAVs was hit and the crew were forced to bail out, despite the advanced armour; the other sprayed the entire building with machine gun fire, accidentally aping the favourite tactic of countless untrained insurgents. I could imagine the chaos instead, just as the mortar teams zeroed in on the building and dropped a dozen shells on the roof. Strongpoint or not, they sure as hell felt it. In the confusion, a couple of platoons ran up to the walls, threw grenades inside, then crashed into the building. The Pakistanis fought bravely, but they didn't stand a chance.

“We got prisoners here, boss,” one of the section commanders said. “Everyone in this barracks wants to surrender. They just got here, they say.”

“Get them tied and then outside,” Lesage ordered, sharply. “And make damn sure they’re naked.”

I nodded in understanding. Once, stripping captives naked upon capture would have been considered against the Laws of War, but that had been before the captives had started using surrender as a means to get close to the troops before throwing grenades. Now, all captives, male or female, were stripped upon capture. Those who protested were unceremoniously shot. There was no longer any room for decency in war.

The Pakistanis were putting up a savage fight around the command building, the building we couldn't simply hit with mortars because we needed it intact. Collapsing it over the bunker entrance would have been counterproductive. Instead, the mercenaries pushed closer under covering fire from the LAVs, then hurled gas grenades into the building. Anyone who hadn't been vaccinated against the specific compound would be throwing up right now, unless they'd worn full-body protection. The firing started to die away, allowing the mercenaries a chance to get closer and blow down the wall with an antitank rocket. Staggering under the gas, the remaining Pakistanis were wiped out quickly.

I watched, unable to do anything else, as the mercenaries swept down and into the bunker. It had been designed to survive a nuclear strike, which meant that if they managed to close all of the security doors, we were screwed. We’d have to beg Langley to send a drone carrying a deep-penetration missile, which wasn't likely to happen. I found myself praying in earnest as the seconds ticked away, before they broke into the bunker.

“Got a strongpoint here,” one of the officers reported. “The doors are secured, though; they can't keep us out much longer.”

“Call for their surrender,” Lesage suggested. “Tell them that we will let them live.”

I wasn't sure how well that would go down. France’s penal system was a joke, but the Marquis would probably hand their prisoners over to the United States, which would send them to Antarctica. They’d spend the rest of their lives in a prison compound, helping Uncle Sam to exploit the vast wealth of raw materials in the frozen continent. Most of them would be dead within two years, but that hardly mattered. They’d been caught in the act of committing terrorism and no one would speak for them.

There was another outburst of firing from the camp’s vehicle compound. Someone had shown more imagination than common sense and managed to start up one of the small tanks, intending to head out to engage the LAVs. He hadn't realised that the mortar teams had been keeping their tubes loaded; they opened fire the moment the recon guys told them that the tank was moving. One came down directly on top of the tank and blew it to pieces.

“Shoddy Third World crap,” someone muttered over the network. “No one could have survived that.”

“Check the rest of the vehicles anyway,” Lesage ordered. Two platoons were already on their way to sweep the compound. “Alpha Lead; what about that damned bunker?”

“They appear to have had a civil war,” Alpha Lead said. “Several guys turned their guns on their leaders and want to surrender. And we caught the big bad trying to get out through a tunnel.”

I breathed a sigh of absolute relief.

“Get them all up to the surface,” Lesage ordered. “And then sweep the bunker carefully. We don’t know what else there might be waiting for us.”

It was nearly ten minutes before we found out. “Sir, we found a nuke,” Alpha Lead reported. “They were going to blow us to hell.”

“Good thing they failed,” Lesage said, evenly. The glance he threw at me promised trouble later on. “Get the IED team to check it out, then place a guard on it. I have an idea.”

I glanced at my watch. It had been barely seventeen minutes since the fighting had begun. I’d thought that it was longer ...

... But then, I always felt that way.

 

Chapter Twenty-One

The prisoners looked a very sorry lot.

They lay on the ground naked, their hands secured behind their backs with plastic ties. A handful of dead bodies lay amongst them, young men – boys, really – who had dared to object and had been shot down to encourage the others. Some of them were whimpering quietly; the stench of urine, rising to my nostrils, told me that others had lost control of their bladders. None of them would dare put up a fight.

I’d wondered if I would recognise any of them, but none of them were familiar. Chances were that they were all new recruits, idiots who had signed up out of conviction, or peer pressure, or merely because they thought that it would be a great adventure. The SSE team was already taking DNA samples from them, comparing their genetic code to the vast database of captured or killed terrorists. In theory, the data would help them to uncover more sections of the terrorist network.

The mercenaries had brought out the girls, including the one they’d offered to me, but kept them separate from the rest of the prisoners. They hadn't bothered to tie their hands, merely keeping an eye on them as the girls gratefully sipped coffee provided by a couple of the soldiers. I’d felt pity and horror when I’d seen the girl they’d offered to me, but some of them were even worse off. One of them was missing her teeth, all removed by the terrorists to make it impossible for her to bite them when they forced their way into her mouth. Another had been crippled, the tendons in his legs sliced to make it impossible for her to walk. I promised myself that I would do whatever it took to make sure that they were on the flight out, even if I had to walk to Oran and catch a ship to France. I owed it to them.

“We haven't seen any signs of activity in the nearest army base,” Lesage said, as his men finished sweeping the terrorist camp. The nuke had been hidden in a nearby building, where a team of bomb-disposal experts were working on it. “But we can only stay here an hour at most before we have get out of here.”

I nodded. The terrorists hadn't bothered to provide us with an airfield, which meant that we would have to march back to the first airfield just to get the hell out of Algeria. So far, we were relatively safe, but that wouldn't last. It was quite possible that someone in the base had managed to scream for help before we overran it. How long would it take the Algerians to get out here?

“Get the vehicles up and running,” I suggested. “The girls won’t be able to walk that far.”

Lesage scowled, but I noticed that he didn't object. Anyone with a shred of decency would have been moved by their plight. I’d seen enough wounds on them to know that they had been raped by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of young recruits. There was no shortage of other girls to take their place after they died. And die they would.

“We put the Butcher in a nearby building,” he said, instead. “Do you want to see him?”

“Yeah,” I said, reluctantly. I wanted to put a bullet through his head. “I’ll see him now.”

Ibrahim Muslim Khatris had been stripped naked and secured to a chair with a set of metal handcuffs. A medic had taken a brief look at him and reported that he didn't seem to have any suicide implants, even the traditional hollow tooth. I couldn't say that I was surprised; the terrorist masterminds had no qualms about sending people out to die, but they were reluctant to commit suicide themselves. Even so, Khatris had to know that he wasn't going to enjoy the next few months. Once the Marquis handed him over to the United States, he would be publically executed and unspeakable things would be done to his corpse.

Even in the dim lighting, I saw a glint of recognition in his eyes as he saw me. “You traitor,” he snarled at me in Arabic, and followed up with a long list of unpleasant suggestions about my ancestry. “You ...”

“Shut up,” I said, in the same language. That surprised him; he’d taken my inability to speak Arabic at face value. It wasn't uncommon for adult reverts to struggle with learning Arabic, to the point where they never truly got the hang of it. “What were you thinking?”

I felt a violent wave of hatred threatening to overcome me as I stared down at his dark face. Here was the true enemy of Islam, as well as the entire human race. No amount of malice from outside the faith could have matched the damage he’d done, not even Osama Bin Laden had managed to do so much to cripple the religion he’d claimed to love. Khatris had awakened a force that might destroy Islam, putting us through our own Holocaust ... and even if we avoided that fate, he’d sown seeds that would rip us apart. I wondered just how many of his own people hated him now, for what he’d brought to his country. It would be decades before Pakistan could recover from the disasters this man and his followers had inflicted on them.

“I did what I had to do,” Khatris said. The self-righteousness in his voice contrasted oddly with the underlying whine. Even as an exile, he'd lived in luxury. He wasn’t used to physical suffering. “I worked to preserve the faith ...”

My temper snapped and I grabbed him by the neck. “You think you helped your fucking country? You threw your people into hell!”

He yelped in pain as I shook him. I knew he didn't understand what he'd done, even though I didn't understand why he'd done it. Maybe he'd just wanted power – or maybe he’d truly believed the crap he spewed from his mouth. But trying to enforce Islam on people who didn't truly accept it would always lead to disaster. Hadn't they learned anything from the collapse of the Soviet Union? Communism was just as much a religion, in its own way, as Islam – and trying to impose communism was equally disastrous for the population, and the elite.

But he wouldn't have understood. The jihadists sincerely believed that they had brought down the Soviet Union, that their struggle in Afghanistan had been the decisive battle that had crippled a superpower. Their narrative didn't include the problems the Russians had with their economy, or the simple fact that their system rewarded lies and braggarts rather than people who came up with great ideas. Or, for that matter, that the United States had forced the Russians to keep spending just to match America’s latest weapons systems. Who wanted a story where they weren't the heroes?

I could have confronted him with the depths of his failure. It would have been easy to tell him how many girls had eagerly gone back to school since we’d occupied Pakistan, after they’d been told that female education was no longer permitted. Or, for that matter, how many businessmen had joined us in struggling to rebuild the Pakistani economy after his half-assed attempt at imposing Islamic financial laws had crushed most of the system and put nearly two-thirds of the country out of work. I could even have told him that the dreaded North-West Frontier, where even the Pakistani military had never been able to exercise real control, was coming around.

But he wouldn't have understood.

“Victor is using you,” I said, changing the subject. He looked up at me, suspiciously. “Just what did you think he had in mind?”

“I don't know what you are talking about,” he grunted, finally. “And I will not help a betrayer in any case ...”

I scowled at my own mistake. Victor had probably come to Khatris under an assumed name, maybe an experienced insurgent from Chechnya. The war fought there had been truly savage, far worse than the bloodbath as we’d stormed Islamabad. And Victor would have no problems passing himself off as a Islamic warrior. Hell, he would have fewer limitations than I!

“You have someone who has been helping you set up your plan in France,” I said, sharply. “What do you think he wants to do for you?”

“I won’t tell you anything,” Khatris growled at me. “Go burn in hell ...”

He followed it up with some more choice curses in Arabic as I walked outside and waved to a couple of soldiers who’d been guarding him.

“Get him ready for transport,” I ordered. They nodded, even though they must have wondered why I could issue orders. “Make sure he’s secure. And then drug him.”

Lesage was talking with a couple of his officers, looking down at the prisoners. “We caught five or six people we think might be important,” he said. “One of them is a deputy minister in the local government, probably your man’s liaison officer. The others are Pakistani training sergeants, we think. They based a lot of their old system on the British military.”

I nodded. “We can take them back to base for interrogation,” I said. Khatris might think he was tough, but the latest in truth serums would have him singing like a lark. Combined with a skilful interrogator, he’d tell us everything we wanted to know. And then he could be handed over to the CIA for disposal. “What do you intend to do with the prisoners?”

“We have a nuke,” Lesage said. “I intend to blow the base.”

“There's a twenty million dollar bounty for any recovered nukes,” I said, carefully. “Langley would pay you for it, no questions asked.”

“Langley isn't going to do anything about helping my country,” Lesage said. “Twenty million dollars won’t be enough to compensate me for missing my chance. Besides, if we use the nuke, there will be no evidence left of our presence here.”

I stared down at the ground, trying to find an argument that might dissuade him. Setting off a nuke in Algeria would put the Algerian Government in hot water, not least because they had sworn never to try to develop nukes for themselves. After Pakistan, the US had committed itself to blocking the efforts of Third World countries to produce nuclear warheads. Naturally, they responded by trying even harder – and sharing notes on how best to hide their program from the prying eyes of American observers. It didn't help that China and Russia didn't see themselves obliged to help the US enforce the unilateral decision. In hindsight, I suspected that the President would have been wiser to try to dicker with both of our rivals, rather than acting without consultation. They would probably have gone along with it if they had received something in exchange.

But there was nothing. This camp – and I suspected that it wasn't the only one – had been training young men to slip into France and join an army that would attempt to take the streets, to bring France down in civil war ... or impose an Islamic State. I hated them because of what they had done to my religion, even though I shared the faith; Lesage felt no kinship with the bastards. And why, in the final analysis, should he? They were ripping his country apart.

“Do it,” I said, tiredly. Langley would blow a fuse, but it wouldn't start a war. Everyone would be more intent on finding out what had happened in Algeria – and demanding answers from the Algerian Government. “Just make sure that it will actually detonate.”

I wandered over to the edge of the camp, where the girls were slowly being helped onto a captured truck. They looked pathetic as they climbed onboard, staring around as if they didn't know if they were being rescued or if they were merely being transported to a much nastier fate. And even if they thought they were being rescued, they would have no reason to be cheerful. If they were returned to their families, they would be murdered for the crime of being raped. I ground my teeth as I caught sight of the girl I’d refused to rape. She hadn't deserved anything as vile as what had happened to her.

The CIA had paid me well for my operations for them. I could use the money to ensure that they obtained schooling somewhere, perhaps in Cuba or Canada. The US probably wouldn't take them in, even with the CIA backing it, not given where they'd come from. Cuba, on the other hand, was discovering the joys of capitalism; it was one of the few countries to be enjoying an economic boom. I had enough money to make sure that they got a new chance at life.

If they live that long, I thought, sourly. If rough sex between consenting adults can do damage, what could repeated rapes do to their victims, particularly when the girls had been immature when they’d been raped for the first time? I’d seen enough medical reports from Taliban rape camps to know that the girls would be very lucky if they were able to have children in the future, if they hadn't caught all kinds of STDs. The idea that radical Muslim fighters wouldn’t have sex whenever they had a chance was nonsense. There had been quite a few terrorists who had made use of whores, or drugs ... or even, when living in the West, kept a girlfriend.

Maybe they’ll all die from AIDS, I thought, although it wasn't funny. AIDS was ripping Africa apart, now that the drugs they needed to keep it under control were no longer being sent to them. There was a cure, of sorts, for AIDS now – it had come out of a biological warfare lab – but few people could afford it. If you wanted to immigrate to the United States and you failed the blood test, the doors would be slammed in your face. No one could be charitable now.

Lesage bellowed for me to join the soldiers as we marched out of the camp. “There’s some army activity reported in the nearest base,” he said. “I think someone has noticed that something has gone very wrong.”

“Finally,” I said. The terrorist camp wasn't that far from Oran ... and Oran had no less than three army bases surrounding it. Anyone would think that the new government thought it had to repress its population. And they would be right. “Do you intend to engage them with the gunships?”

“Not if we can avoid it,” Lesage admitted. “The nuke gives us other options. They may wonder if the bastards had a civil war rather than being hammered by an American assault force. Besides, no one has tried to take out their radar stations.”

“True,” I agreed. Given that Algeria was hostile territory, the covering forces would launch HARM missiles at their radar stations as soon as the assault force had begun operations, taking down their radar network completely. If that hadn’t happened, they might wonder if it had really been the Americans who had crushed the terrorist camp and detonated the nuke. “And what if we’re detected leaving the country?”

Lesage gave me a twisted grin. “We’re screwed,” he said. “Well ... we do have some air-to-air missiles mounted on the gunships. We’ll just have to hope they work.”

We marched out of the base in fairly good order, after emplacing the nuke in the damaged LAV. The SSE team had pulled out an astonishing amount of computer hard drives and even paperwork from the bunker – controlling a terrorist network is hard without notes, even though it was a massive security breach – and I found myself hoping that they’d be able to pull out something useful, rather than just porn. A smaller vehicle carried the most important prisoners, all drugged to ensure that they couldn't kill themselves before we got them back to Corsica. No one would ask questions about how the Butcher of San Francisco was interrogated.

I took a look back towards the camp, half-wishing that we could do something for the recruits we’d left behind, tied and locked inside the remaining barracks. Most of them had joined knowing what they were getting into, but they’d been young and stupid. Surely they could reform ...?

But there was no way to get them out. If they stayed in Algeria, they would be pulled back into the terrorist networks. There was no other choice if they wanted to live; there were no jobs, no hope of building a proper life ... and they were contaminated. Maybe they would have had the strength to pull themselves free, but we couldn't take the chance. I looked back towards the sand dunes, muttering a silent prayer under my breath. God would judge them.

“They finally got organised,” Lesage said, as we boarded the aircraft. “There’s a small armoured column heading for the base. They’ll be caught up in the blast”

The captured vehicles would be left at the airfield, with IEDs attached to make life interesting for the soldiers who tried to recover them. I wondered if they’d appreciate the irony of us using a weapon that had been perfected by the people they allowed to live in their country. Somehow, I doubted it. The aircraft shook madly as it took off, clawing its way into the sky. We had to put as much distance as we could between the aircraft and the nuke before it blew.

I could hear the girls screaming, or praying, as the soldiers tried to comfort them. They’d probably never seen a plane before, let alone flown on one. The shaking bothered me and I was an experienced flier. What did they make of it?

Twenty minutes later, the nuke detonated.

By then, we were safely away.

 

Chapter Twenty-Two



“I’m afraid that two of the girls did not survive the flight,” the medic said. “Three more will be very lucky to last the week.”



I cursed. The moment we’d landed on Corsica, the girls had been transported to a hospital run by the DST for medical treatment. I’d known that they were in a bad state, but I’d hoped that they all would survive. But it seemed that their captors had managed to kill them even after they had been recovered.



“Why?” I growled. “Why did they die?”



The medic shook his head. “A combination of physical abuse and malnutrition,” he said. He’d been a combat medic in the French army before joining the Marquis, or so I had been told; he’d earned the respect of many of the mercenaries through patching them together on the battlefield. “They were dying even before we took them out of the terrorist camp. At least one of them was suffering internal bleeding, as well as the other damage ... all things considered, I am amazed they lasted as long as they did.



“The three who are on the verge of death have the same problem,” he added. “We have started emergency treatments, but there simply isn't enough left of them to ensure survival. The beatings alone crippled them, to say nothing of the bad food and lack of water ... and one of them has a bad case of AIDS. I don’t think they knew – and if they did, they wouldn't have treated her.”



They would have killed her, I thought. No doubt being infected with AIDS would have been her fault too, after being kidnapped and then being raped time and time again. At least that girl had managed to take some measure of revenge. All of her rapists would have gone away with AIDS too. But they would have continued to spread the disease ...



No one had given me a condom, when they'd offered me the girl. I doubted that most of the recruits would even have known what a condom was, let alone why they should use it. Sex education was banned in Islamic states, after all; they couldn't have the women trying to take control of their own bodies, or the men realising that they didn't need religious sanction to have sex. (Although that was probably a lost cause.) If I’d slept with her, what would I have caught?



“The remaining fourteen girls have a decent chance at survival,” the medic continued, grimly. “However, it is unlikely that they will ever be able to have children, or lead a completely normal life. The physical damage to their vaginas through violent rape is bad enough, but several of them have picked up infections that were threatening to spread throughout their bodies before we started treating them. A number also have internal damage; one of the girls has a broken arm, which was apparently left untreated for several weeks. We've done what we can for them, but they will never be the same again.”



He looked down at the floor. “There’s also the mental damage ...”



I held up a hand. “I know,” I said, tiredly. They’d been taken from their families and repeatedly raped. And they'd known that if they somehow managed to get back home, they would be murdered by their own families. There was no way they would walk away without mental scars, no matter how adaptable the human mind was. It might be years before they could function in normal society – if they ever could. “More evidence of man’s inhumanity to man.”



The male students who had become the core of the Taliban had been separated from women, making it easier for them to regard women as things. Every graduate from the terrorist camp had been given the same treatment, preparing them for the day they imposed their master’s version of Islamic Law on the world. I pitied every woman who fell into their clutches ... no matter who they were, they would be forced to conform.



I shook my head. “And our own wounded?”



“All of them will recover,” the medic assured me. Seven mercenaries had been killed in their fighting, their bodies recovered and brought back to Corsica for burial. Twelve more had been injured, three badly. “The worst will be spending a few days in the regeneration tank.”



I nodded. Combat medicine had taken terrific strides forward in the days after 9/11, even before nanotech had been introduced as a medical system. I’d seen soldiers who would have been permanently crippled in an earlier age return to duty, often despite politicians who worried over the cost of advanced medicine and surgery. And the body armour had helped keep them alive too. The terrorists simply had nothing to match it.



“That’s a relief,” I said. The mercenaries had known the risks when they joined up with the Marquis, but that didn't stop me feeling guilty about the dead and wounded. “Keep me informed about the girls.”



“I will,” the medic said. “But I doubt that they can ever return to a normal life.”



“They never had one,” I muttered, as the medic left the room. “They never even had a chance.”



The moment we’d landed on the island, I’d been shown to a room and told – rather impolitely – to stay there. I wasn't exactly a prisoner, but I could understand the Marquis not wanting to show off everything to a CIA agent – even though I wasn't a regular agent in any sense of the word. They’d hired me, just as the DST had hired the Marquis, to do their dirty work. I glanced at my watch, noted absently that I’d remained in the room for seventy minutes, and then resumed my pacing. It was impossible to sleep, even though I felt tired.



They’d also confiscated my cell phone before we’d left for Algeria, which meant that I had no way of getting in touch with Langley. Not that I really wanted to talk to them, of course, but I did need to know what was happening in the wake of the nuclear blast. Everyone with monitoring stations or orbital satellites would have picked up the detonation, which would have been unmistakable. By now, the USAF had probably flown sampling missions and determined that the nuke was one of the missing warheads from Pakistan. Algeria would have some explaining to do.



I grinned. The CIA would have to pay through the nose for the Butcher of San Francisco. And then they’d have to come up with a story about how brave American servicemen had captured the bastard ... they wouldn't want to admire that it had been French mercenaries who had taken him captive. Maybe they’d use it as a chance to promote their own specialised paramilitary force, the one I’d served in before they’d found other uses for me. There were plenty of people who didn't like the idea of the CIA having an SF team that didn't answer to anyone else.



There was a tap at the door, which opened a moment later. “Your presence is requested in the conference room,” a young woman said. “I am to escort you there.”



I wondered who she was and what she was doing on the base, before deciding that it didn't matter. Compared to the girls we’d brought out of the camp, she glowed with life ... but then, she hadn't been kidnapped, or raped, or abused. Did she know how lucky she was? I didn't ask, instead allowing her to lead me down through a network of corridors and into a conference room, where Lesage was looking down at a map. One wall held a giant plasma television tuned to WebTV, where an announcer with boobs too large to be real was holding forth about the nuclear detonation in Algeria. A set of computer displays showed real-time updates from a dozen different sites.



“Even the mainstream media has noticed,” Lesage said, with an evil grin. The European MSM might be under strict regulation, intended to prevent it from ‘offending’ anyone, but even they couldn't miss a nuclear detonation in Algeria. “Right now, they really cannot decide what to say about it. Who knows who might protest in the streets.”



I looked up at the screen. The announcer seemed to have the basic facts right, although she identified the terrorist camp as an army base and didn't seem to know anything about who had attacked the installation, or why. I was surprised that something hadn’t leaked from Langley – they had to know who’d launched the raid – but perhaps Li’s superiors had managed to keep a lid on the whole affair. Besides, it would prove very embarrassing for the people who had refused to allow American troops to go into Algeria to eliminate the camp. It would be much worse when they realised just whom we’d captured and pulled out of the camp before the nuke had detonated.



“I had a message from Jean-Luc,” Lesage said, flatly. “The French Government is doing a lot of running around and screaming right now. No one seemed to know what to do about it.”



I wasn't surprised. The smart thing to do would have been to declare martial law, remove the political officers and crack down hard on extremists. But I doubted they had the will for it – and, right now, they might not have the ability either. There was a case to be made that it was not a French problem, but somehow I doubted that would appeal to them. The former Pakistani nukes were almost certainly aimed at the United States.



Or were they? Algeria was quite some distance from the States.



I put the thought aside for later consideration and leaned forward. “What about the Sixth Fleet?”



“Washington hasn't issued an official statement yet,” Lesage said, “but the Clinton and her task force – including a full MEU – have left Malta and are sailing towards Algeria. That’s more than enough firepower to mount a punitive strike on the bastards if they refuse to provide Washington with satisfactory answers. They also have the Kabul and Baghdad with them, both arsenal ships. Algeria could be smashed flat if they refuse to play ball.”



“Good,” I said, finally. Now, if we could convince them to interdict traffic between Algeria and France, we might have a chance to get ahead of Victor. The camp we’d destroyed might well not be the only one – and God alone knew how many terrorists had come out of it since they’d started training up new recruits. “And what has Algeria said?”



“Nothing, so far,” Lesage said, with a very Gallic shrug. “The government isn't actually that popular with their people, even the poor. All those promises that they couldn't keep ... and pretty much everyone in Oran saw the mushroom cloud. Right now, there’s a great deal of panic running through the streets. Who knows how much fallout might be drifting over Algeria?”



“Oh,” I said.



I’d honestly forgotten fallout ... but then, modern nukes were surprisingly clean. The Pakistanis, on the other hand, hadn’t been able to build their own clean weapons. I’d heard a rumour that we’d even offered to swap their old warheads for new ones, but the Pakistanis had refused. They’d suspected that the warheads would come with a kill-switch that could be triggered from Washington and they’d been undoubtedly correct.



But in Algeria, where government statements were believed to be outright lies – and they were, most of them time – rumour would spread wildly. There would be hundreds of thousands – even millions – of people trying to flee the country, believing that they were being chased by fallout. The sheer number of misconceptions about nuclear fallout is staggering; people treat it almost as an invisible demon rather than something that could be handled, given the right equipment. Or, for that matter, something that could be understood. Nuclear winter had been a myth, to all intents and purposes, but I would bet half my salary that most of Algeria now believed that the country was going to crumble to ash. Even the most brutal government would have problems maintaining control when their own enforcers were panicking too. Keeping the population ignorant only made them more inclined to panic when confronted with exaggerated rumours.



“We’ll just have to see what happens,” Lesage said. “So far, there haven't been any riots in France, but ...”



“They might still be stunned,” I agreed. It was easy to imagine nuclear fallout drifting over the sea and into France, even though it wasn't likely to happen. The nuke hadn't been that dirty, had it? Maybe the population would remain indoors rather than going out on the streets, purely out of fear of radiation. “But that won’t last.”



North Africa and the Middle East are hotbeds of conspiracy theories, far worse than anywhere in the United States. I'd once heard a rumour that the Rightly Guided Caliphs had died because they’d been executed by the CIA, a rumour that required vast ignorance to do more than laugh at. After all, nearly a thousand years lay between the Caliphs and the discovery of America, let alone the birth of the CIA. Logic and reason suggested that if the CIA had time travel, why hadn't we gone back in time and strangled Osama in his cradle? Or, for that matter, why not Hitler? Or Stalin? Or Jefferson Davis?



But logic and reason had no place in the Middle East. It shouldn't have been surprising; the population wasn't stupid – they knew their governments lied to them all the time. Anything that came with a government stamp of approval was automatically discounted; indeed, it hadn't been until relatively recently that they’d had something reassembling a free media. Instead, rumours spread, each one crazier than the last – and were believed. Who knew what rumours would start to explain a nuclear detonation in Algeria? Perhaps it would all be blamed on the United States.



Of course it will be, I thought, sourly. We get blamed for everything these days.



And then vast protests would start on the streets and governments would shiver ...



“We are currently interrogating the captives,” Lesage said. “The junior officers were very quick to talk; it seems that most of them wanted to go home, but their leaders refused to let them go. And they were scared of being arrested when they reached Pakistan ... in any case, they’ve been talking quite freely. The camp has been operating for three years and thousands of recruits have passed through it.”



I winced. “What happened to them?”



“A number went to Pakistan or Iran,” Lesage admitted. “Several went to Indonesia to support the war against the Chinese occupation force. The remainder ... apparently, the remainder went to France.”



I heard the pain in his voice and shivered. “How many?”



“They don't seem to know,” Lesage said. “But we could be looking at upwards of ten thousand trained terrorists, joining the ones who are already there. And they are apparently armed to the teeth.”



It didn't surprise me. Once the French police had been convinced to leave certain areas alone, the terrorists could start bringing in weapons and ammunition. A smuggling network could get thousands of weapons into France, either through shipping them directly from Algeria or buying them in Russia – the Russians would sell to anyone – and transporting them west on the roads. And, once they got into the EU, no one would inspect the trucks carrying the weapons. They might as well have vanished.



Ten thousand, I thought. Or was it worse? Might they have been using those trainees to train up more recruits in France itself? There was no shortage of young men without prospects, embracing Radical Islam because they had nothing else in their lives; how many of them could be trained and turned into terrorists? And they would be regarded as completely expendable by their masters. Hell, I could see them deliberately getting many youths killed, simply because they would pose a problem to any new government too.



And then there was Victor ... what the hell was he doing?



“We’re still working on your friend,” Lesage added. “He’s older and weaker than the trainers, so we’re having to be more careful with him. But the SSE team has pulled out a disturbing amount of information. They’re it together now; they’ve promised a briefing in a couple of hours. Éclair will be flying out to join us.”



I blinked in surprise. “Won’t they notice he’s missing?”



“That’s his problem,” Lesage said. “But he’s been running an inspection tour – and there are some military installations here – so he should be covered.”



“Let’s hope so,” I said. France’s command structure was a mess. God alone knew who was loyal to the country and who was loyal to nothing and no one, apart from themselves. “I do need to talk to Langley ...”



“Wait until after the briefing,” Lesage ordered. I nodded, reluctantly. Langley would be having fits. Li would certainly want an explanation of what had happened, if only so she could help her superiors come up with a cover story of their own. “We need to know what is actually happening before we decide what to tell the world.”



“It’s too late,” I pointed out. “Everyone knows that a nuke went off in Algeria.”



“They don’t know why,” Lesage said. “And, right now, the US doesn't come first. We started this to save France. Washington has made its opinion quite clear. We are to sink or swim on our own.”



“You did this to yourselves,” I reminded him, crossly. “What were you thinking when you allowed so much corruption to sweep into your country?”



My eyes hardened. “There won’t be a second D-Day to save you,” I added. “Your culture and society will be eradicated. It will be far worse than the Nazi occupation.”



“Politicians,” Lesage said, simply. “They brought this plague down on us.”



I couldn't disagree with him.

 

Chapter Twenty-Three

As promised, Éclair arrived in an hour and was promptly escorted into a side room. I waited outside, having been told in no uncertain terms that I wasn't invited to join the pre-briefing conference. It shouldn't have surprised me; Éclair would want some answers from his fellow countryman before he asked the CIA agent to join the briefing. The door was supposed to be soundproofed, but I could hear muffled shouting outside before it opened and the two men came out. Neither of them looked particularly happy.

“The briefing starts in ten minutes,” Lesage said, as I rose to my feet. “We can wait in the conference room.”

The conference room was no different to any of the ones I’d seen in the States, apart from the giant French flag someone had hung on one wall. A handful of aides passed out glasses of water for us, then left the room as several other officers entered and took their seats. Finally, the intelligence staff arrived and closed the door. They looked just like the American counterparts, right down to the glasses and nerdy appearance. Some things never change.

“Director,” one of them said. He’d been a DST analyst before he'd been given the boot for being too political incorrect, according to Lesage. The Marquis had snapped him up before the ink had dried on his termination form. “I’m afraid it’s bad news.”

“It is always bad news,” Éclair said. “And if I wanted good news, I would attend a government press conference.” He scowled around the room. “Can we begin?”

The analyst tapped a key and a PowerPoint slide appeared in front of us. Several officers groaned, including Lesage. PowerPoint is great for presentations, but intelligence officers in Iraq and Afghanistan became more concerned with making the slides look good than actually thinking about the material. These days, the US military had effectively banned PowerPoint from its deployments, although it still infested the Pentagon. The people who bitch and moan about Microsoft rarely mention how it can ruin military thinking?

“We subjected Khatris to a Level One interrogation, once we were assured of his health,” the analyst began. “Once drugged, he started to talk, although his mind wandered and we had to keep concentrating on the issue at hand to actually pull useful information out of him. Sadly, even the best truth drugs have their limits. However, what we did find was just what Khatris intended to do.”

There was a long pause. “The overall goal of Khatris’s plan is to seize control of Western Europe,” the analyst stated, bluntly. “His capture may not have disrupted the operation.”

I heard several officers sucking in their breath. The whole concept was so outrageous, so incomprehensible, that they found it hard to grasp. It had been decades since France had been seriously threatened – and the threat from the USSR had been understandable. This was something different.

And the operation might still be underway.

“The plan was apparently the brainchild of a new recruit from Afghanistan,” the analyst continued, when no one said anything. I guessed that the new recruit was actually Victor. “Their original plan was for a mass uprising in the streets of France that would overrun the government offices and take power, but the newcomer pointed out that it would leave much of the French Army untouched and ready to fight back. Instead, they could weaken the French Government, put their own people in positions of power and use the threat of mass violence to convince the rest of the government to submit. The army the Pakistanis were training in Algeria was intended to provide additional muscle, to reinforce the Arabs currently serving in the French Army. Most of them are expected to switch sides the moment the coup is launched.

“The planned destruction of the Peace and Harmony Mosque – along with a number of other targets – was intended to provide a rallying cry for the Arab population, as well as seemingly justifying their anger in the eyes of French politicians. In the confusion, a number of political leaders who might be expected to fight would be murdered, with their replacements already groomed to take their place and start the transformation of France into an Islamic state. The nuclear facilities would be transferred to their control, allowing them to deter the United States or anyone else from interfering.

“They have also assassinated a number of community leaders who refused to cooperate with the plot,” he added. “To all intents and purposes, most radical groups have been brought under their banner through liberal applications of the carrot and the stick. The carrot is access to weapons and training that far exceeds what they have been able to obtain for themselves; the stick is violence when they refuse to cooperate. The absence of a riot after the shootout in Paris, two days ago, is a sign of their control. They did not want to tip their hand before it was too late. A riot might force the government to declare martial law and who knows what might happen then?

“There are similar cells in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Britain, according to the interrogation results. Most of them are more geared around causing trouble and preventing any help from reaching France, but some of them – particularly the ones in Italy –have a good chance of taking control of large parts of the government. The recent cuts in the army and police force means that Italy will have real problems responding to the uprising, not least because a number of political leaders are targeted for assassination.”

“My God,” Éclair said, quietly. “And then ... what?”

“Once they take control of France, and as much else as they can of Europe, they will launch an invasion of the rest – with the possible exception of Britain,” the analyst said. “Their ability to control the various European navies isn't strong, although they will certainly attempt to seize the docks and as many ships as they can. Apparently, they expect Russia to stay out of the fighting, perhaps deterred by the nukes they will capture in France. Once they have destroyed or scattered all organised opposition, they will begin breaking Europe to the yoke. Churches will be destroyed, Jews will be exterminated and all Muslims will be forced to toe the line. Those who refuse to accept their particular brand of Islam will be killed.”

He looked around the room, his expression grim. “France will no longer exist, nor will the rest of the European Union,” he concluded. “Instead, there will be the Caliphate, a power that runs from Scandinavia to North Africa, a power that will inevitably go to war with the United States and Russia. The Americans may win the war, but France will be gone. It will either become radioactive ruins or it will be utterly reshaped by the new regime.”

There was a long silence.

“But we captured the Butcher,” I said, bluntly. “What will that do to their plan?”

“He was just the ... religious authority,” the analyst pointed out. “The person in charge in France is the newcomer from Afghanistan. From the answers he gave, I think that the Butcher is actually having doubts; the newcomer has taken effective command of most of their forces. He’s even the only person with the communications codes needed to establish contact with the sleeper agents and some of the terrorist cells. To all intents and purposes, removing the Butcher has done nothing to derail the original plot.”

“And it might have been given a boost,” Lesage said, sourly. “They can turn the nuke in Algeria into a rallying cry, without having to burn a mosque.”

I stared down at my hands. Victor couldn't have planned it that way, surely? A plan that depended upon your enemy doing one particular thing was a plan that was doomed to fail; he would know that as well as I did. An experienced FSB officer like himself would follow the KISS principle – Keep It Simple, Stupid – and not rely on us attacking the terrorist camp. But there was no reason why he couldn't take advantage of it ...

And Lesage was right. No matter how fanatical his subordinates, some of them would have questioned the decision to burn the mosque. Hell, one of them had done rather more than question it, or at least it certainly looked that way. But a nuke in Algeria? It would have seemed like a gift from God to him.

And if he didn't allow some reaction, he might lose control of his followers ...

“We could use the Butcher to broadcast halt orders,” an officer I didn't know said. “It should be easy to force him to cooperate.”

“They’d ignore him,” Lesage pointed out. “The Americans tried it in Pakistan, when they captured General Hafiz. His subordinates claimed that it was CGI and just kept on fighting.”

The analyst brought up another slide. “We believe that these are the political leaders who are in danger of being assassinated within the week,” he said. “Once killed, they will be replaced by their deputies, many of whom are either Arabs or members of the various socialist parties. They cannot be expected to put up any resistance as the state falls into enemy hands.”

Éclair tapped the table and silence fell. “Do you believe that they will proceed with their mad plan?”

“They will never have a better chance,” the analyst said, flatly. “If they know that their base in Algeria was attacked, they must suspect that whoever did the attacking recovered enough information to deduce the rest of their plan. If so, their choice becomes jumping now and hoping for the best, or burrowing deep underground and hoping that we won’t find them.”

I nodded. “And the pot is already boiling,” I added. “France is sitting on a powder keg. Even Victor might be unable to halt the explosion now. Their best hope is to move now and hope they catch you on the hop.”

And if Victor only wants to cause absolute chaos, I thought silently, he’ll go ahead anyway.

“Very well,” Éclair said. He looked around the table, his gaze moving from officer to officer. “You know what is at stake for our country. Will you work with me?”

There were nods. “I have spoken to a number of trustworthy officers,” he said, when everyone had agreed. “They will act with us, when the time comes. Officers who are” – his lips twitched – “untrustworthy will be removed as quickly as possible. Units that are effectively all-Arab will be surrounded and disarmed. We will secure as much as possible of the military infrastructure. Officially, this will be under cover of a drill – the nuke gives us an excuse to run a handful of minor exercises. Unofficially ...”

He looked down at the table, then looked up sharply. “To all intents and purposes, we will be launching a coup,” he said, flatly. “The government has betrayed our country. No political leader can be trusted to serve the best interests of France. We will take control, crush the rioters with whatever level of force is required, then start reshaping our country.”

I silently cursed Victor – and everyone else, all the way back to the Egyptian lunatic who had provided the theoretical foundations of modern jihad. Éclair wasn't talking about minor suppression, I knew; he was talking about the mass deportation of millions of people. Or, perhaps, a slaughter that would make the Holocaust look like a child pulling the wings off flies. It was wrong. It was an offence against the true ethos of the West, the basic decency that had propelled us to global power.

But it was that decency that had made it impossible for us to deal with the threat before it had become too late. It had been that decency that had been exploited by our enemies, until we threw it away and showed them just how unpleasant we could be. Had Osama really understood what he’d started? But then, if Osama had lived the life of countless other rich Saudi men, someone else would have stepped forward. The conditions for the war had been set long before Osama had been a glint in his father’s eye. Or possibly a glint in the milkman’s eye. Quite a few of his relatives had claimed that he was illegitimate after his body had been dragged out of Pakistan by the SEALs.

Lesage broke into my thoughts. “Can we expect any help from the CIA?”

“I don’t know,” I said. Langley had shown their willingness to stand aside, but maybe the French could find something to bargain with, apart from the Butcher. “I’d have to ask them ...”

I looked up at the PowerPoint slide and shivered. Victor had laid his plans well, plotting the deaths of the men and women who might organise the resistance. And yet, I could easily see the plan failing to produce a quick and decisive victory. Of course, that might be what Victor actually had in mind ...

“I will ask them,” I promised. Whatever else happened, chaos in France couldn't really benefit Washington. “How long do we have before they make their move?”

“Unknown,” the analyst admitted. “It could be any time from now.”

“I’ll prep my men for the flight back to France,” Lesage said. He grinned at Éclair, who scowled at him. “Aren't you glad I insisted on remaining so close to the mainland?”

“Yes,” Éclair said, grudgingly. I was sure that there was a story in there, one I’d have to hear when I had the chance. “You and your men will be very welcome.”

I stood up and walked over to the far wall, which was covered with a detailed map of France. Lesage had five hundred soldiers under his command, a formidable force when engaging a relatively small terrorist training camp – we’d actually only brought two hundred men to that party – but tiny compared to an entire country. In urban areas, most of the advantages of trained soldiers were badly reduced; untrained insurgents could soak up fire, while their more experienced comrades could plant IEDs and use snipers to make the invaders pay a price for every inch they recovered. We – the United States – had learned from nightmares like Fallujah and Islamabad, but the French had far less experience in modern urban warfare. And now they were talking about a major war in their own cities.

The South of France was almost solidly under Arab control, even if the Arabs were limited to the cities; there were still enough of them to upset the voting demographics. And the tidal wave of refugees didn't help; between Arab pressure and increasingly harsh taxation, the native French population had dropped sharply. Those that remained were under heavy pressure to conform. I visualised the location of French military bases and quietly compared them to the known Arab strongholds. I would have bet good money that most of the ethnic Arab units were based in the south.

“They’re not,” Lesage said, when I asked. “Most of them are actually in the north.”

It made no sense to me, at least at first. Why not have military units they knew would be loyal to their cause in a position to aid the uprisings? And then it struck me; the Arab units were expected to secure the cities in the north, while the trained recruits from Algeria were expected to pin down the military units in the south. Combined with their agents in high places, the French military would be fragmented before it even realised that it was under attack.

“But those units will be alerted,” Éclair said, coming up behind us. “Now, can you talk to the CIA?”

“I’ll call them as soon as you return my phone,” I said, with some irritation. “Do we have any idea where Victor is right now?”

“No,” Éclair said. “And, to be honest, we are unlikely to find out in time.”

I couldn't disagree with him. Victor knew that he was being hunted, so he would keep his head down, probably changing his features to make sure that he couldn't be spotted easily. And once he’d sent the orders for the fighting to begin, everyone would have too many other problems to waste their time looking for him. We might be able to locate him afterwards – he’d have to use cell phones or radios to stay in touch with his forces – but by then the shit would really have hit the fan.

“We’ll just have to act fast and pray,” Lesage added. “If we can act in time, we might be able to render Victor irrelevant.”

Victor is never irrelevant, I thought.

I looked over at Éclair. “Are you going to warn the Italians? Or the Germans?”

“I’m going to call some friends of mine when we start operations,” Éclair said. “If we tell them too soon, they might warn the government ....”

“Or they might be compromised,” Lesage added. An aide entered the room, carrying my cell phone. “You can use the waiting room to call Langley.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Outside, I sagged for a long moment. Whatever else happened in the near future, a lot of people were going to die. And it felt as if it were all my fault. I knew better than to believe it, but I still felt that way. There was going to be a slaughter as the powder keg exploded, with hundreds of thousands of innocent people caught in the middle. How could it be stopped?

I wracked my brain, but nothing suggested itself. Perhaps we could capture Victor, perhaps ... but he was FSB-trained. Breaking him would be difficult – besides, he could be issuing the orders to engage right now. Were we ahead of him or was he ahead of us? There was no way to know.

He wants chaos, I thought, sourly. And chaos is exactly what he will get.

 

Chapter Twenty-Four



The waiting room reminded me – absurdly – of a doctor’s surgery, complete with outdated magazines, a small water dispenser and a television set to CNN. I took a moment to watch the bimbo talking head prattling on about how the President had issued an ultimatum to Algeria – open their nuclear plants for inspection or face the consequences – before turning down the volume and activating the cell phone. It buzzed the moment it linked into the secure network, alerting me to nineteen messages that had come in since I’d turned it off and handed it over to Lesage. Langley wanted a few words with me.



“Good God,” Li said, when she picked up the phone. “What happened?”



“Long story,” I said. I sat down and went through the entire story, starting with my arrest and ending with the recovery of intelligence from Algeria. “France is in deep shit.”



“That was true right from the start,” Li said. She sounded more than a little stunned, although I heard a hint of gloating triumph as well. The faction that had refused to send troops to Algeria to hit the terrorist camp would have to explain why the French, of all people, had captured the greatest mass murderer in American history. It would leak and certain officials would end up looking very bad. Or at least stupid. “What the hell were you thinking, fucking around with a nuke?”



“That wasn't my decision,” I said, defensively. “But in any case, we now know that only five warheads went out of Pakistan. One of them is gone and two more were apparently sold.”



“Which raises the question of just who bought them,” Li pointed out. “I haven’t heard of them falling into T-Ball’s hands.”



I nodded. T-Ball was the codename for a highly-classified multinational operation intended to disrupt nuclear terrorism, by any means necessary. Some of the less classified parts of the operation purchased nuclear materials, no questions asked, while others specialised in producing components designed to wreck nuclear facilities. There had been a story about a set of control chips that turned a standard reactor into a breeder reactor, ready to produce vast quantities of fissile material. It was physically impossible, of course, but terrorists didn't actually know that much about nuclear science. In reality, the chips had been outfitted with trackers and the CIA had been able to locate the terrorist base.



“Leave that for the moment,” I said. “The important issue is doing what we can to save France.”



There was a pause. “Washington has already made its intentions clear,” Li said, “no matter how much I might disapprove. France must stand or fall on its own.”



“The situation has changed,” I reminded her. “If the terrorists win, they will have the French nukes under their control – a threat we could not ignore. Even if France falls into civil war, the nukes will still be up for grabs. And if the Russians do invade, we will be looking at them becoming much more formidable within a decade.”



“Particularly if the Europeans and their Arab enemies burn themselves out before the Russians come riding to the rescue,” Li said. She coughed, meaningfully. “I can take the new report to Washington and ...”



“The new government will probably be quite grateful for American assistance,” I said, seriously. “If they do take control, we will have a new set of allies.”



“Washington will say that French gratitude doesn't last very long,” Li pointed out, dryly. “They made their choice back in 2003.”



“The situation is different,” I said. “You can tell Washington that. However, for the moment, we have to track down Victor. Can you help with that?”



“We are trying to monitor cell phone traffic in France,” Li said, an odd admission that elements in the CIA had been watching the situation in the besieged country carefully. “We may be able to help you pin-point terrorist cells, but so far we haven’t been able to locate anything that looks like an HQ.”



I’d be surprised if they found one. The key to creating an effective terrorist organisation is the cell structure, where one cell wouldn't know anything about the other cells. Victor and a couple of others would have to know more, but they were careful to hide themselves. We could break open a dozen cells and yet find nothing that would lead us to the boss.



But the danger of a cell structure, particularly one composed of young and undisciplined men, was that the cells might start to act on their own. Even Victor would have difficulty keeping them under control indefinitely, particularly as the news about the nuke sank in. He might start urging them to act just to keep some degree of control. If he wanted control.



Li broke into my thoughts. “I can continue to slip you information from the monitoring stations,” she said. “But any other form of help, particularly military help, will need permission from the White House. I shall take it to my superiors at once.”



“Understood,” I said. If nothing else, access to the CIA’s intelligence feed would be very helpful. “And please contact me if you locate Victor.”



I closed the phone, walked back into the briefing room and told Éclair what Li had said. The Frenchman looked grim, although not particularly surprised; he’d already digested Washington’s reluctance to act before discovering just how far Victor was prepared to go to accomplish his ends. Lesage looked less sanguine, muttering darkly under his breath about Anglo-Saxon treachery when France faced her gravest test since 1940. I decided not to mention the fact that France had failed that test spectacularly.



“We’ll deploy to a disused airbase near Paris,” Lesage said, studying the map. “If we’re lucky, we will serve as a mobile reserve.”



“Good,” Éclair said. “Once you’re on the ground, we can start moving against the corrupt and treacherous officers.”



I was pushed to one side to wait as the Marquis prepared to go back into action. It gave me some time to use my cell phone to study the reports from CIA analysts, who had noted an increase in French road traffic heading into Paris from the south. Victor’s plan had called for seizing Paris and eliminating the more stubborn members of the government as quickly as possible, so I deduced that he was moving reinforcements into the city. Without roadblocks and a determined attempt to clear out the poorer parts of Paris, there was little the French could do about it. All Éclair could do was make his preparations and hope like hell that he got his precautions into place ahead of Victor’s own movements.



The reports from Algeria continued to grow more ominous. Apparently, the Islamist Government had refused to accept any blame for the nuke and were claiming that the warhead had actually been smuggled into their country by an American SF team who had used it to blow up an army base and create an excuse to invade. The fact that Washington had declared war on all Islamist governments – and therefore didn't need to manufacture an excuse to invade – seemed to have been lost on them. CNN and FOX both questioned the Algerian story; WebTV had somehow accessed the reports from atmosphere-sampling aircraft and told the entire world that the nuke had come from Pakistan. So far, no one seemed to have realised that the French were involved, but that would change. The Islamists were already demanding that France played host to refugees while they coped with the fallout.



I switched to the French MSM and got a dose of heavy-duty propaganda, shat out by someone with more imagination than actual common sense. It was France’s duty to take in the refugees, the media claimed, even though they might be radioactive. France had committed vast sins against Algeria and should do whatever she could to make up for them. The fact that very few people in France today remembered the days when Algeria had been a French colony – let alone fought in the war – definitely seemed to have been lost on them. But then, guilt had always been an effective way for people to get others to surrender to them.



The internet seemed to have taken a different line, although there were so many voices that it was impossible to pick out a common factor. The refuges were coming from a country where a nuke had detonated; they would be covered in radioactive dust. Anyone who went near them would be rendered sterile. And that was one of the saner rants. One person went so far as to claim that Algeria had deliberately detonated the nuke on their own territory to provide an excuse to invade France. Apparently, it was all part of an extremely cunning plan.



“Time to fly,” Lesage said. I switched off the cell phone and stood up, feeling oddly useless. I could do nothing until they located Victor – and even then, I might not be able to go after him. “We have to be in France before someone manages to shut down the ATC.”



I nodded. The reports had said that thousands of small boats were leaving Algeria, along with hundreds of aircraft, all heading to Europe. Even if the French Government found the steel to order the French Navy to keep them out, it would be difficult; the majority of the ships were in the Atlantic ports, rather than anywhere closer to Algeria. It would be days before they could arrive in force. Maybe the US would be willing to help out, but it would depend on Washington’s decision. God alone knew which way the decision would go.



There were more aircraft on the field this time, roaring to life and taxiing down the runway before staggering their way into the air. I saw a long line of soldiers heading into the final aircraft, followed by a handful of people who were definitely civilians. Lesage saw my questioning look and explained that they were people who refused to stay on Corsica – which had called up the militia to deal with the incoming tide of refugees – when France was in mortal peril. I just hoped they weren’t going from the frying pan into the fire.



“This way,” Lesage ordered, pulling me towards an aircraft that looked like a luxury executive jet. “The Director wishes you to join him on the flight.”



Inside, I was immediately reminded of Air Force One, although it was a smaller and less capable aircraft. The stewardess wore a low-cut blouse and a miniskirt that barely avoided showing the lower half of her buttocks. I wondered, absently, what the soldiers made of it as I was escorted into a tiny command centre, complete with computers, a set of secure telephones and a television tuned permanently to a French television station. Éclair was sitting in front of one of the computers, speaking into a headset. I took the seat the stewardess pointed me to and strapped in.



“EUROFOR had a choice between raising new infantry regiments or buying a handful of command aircraft for senior officers,” Éclair said, by way of explanation. “The bureaucrats decided that it made sense to buy the aircraft, rather than having additional soldiers – after all, when were we going to war again?”



He rolled his eyes. “And while these aircraft are actually quite capable, a single man with a MANPAD can blow them out of the sky,” he added. “But back then, shooting down the command aircraft could only have improved matters.”



I could easily believe it. Back home, units on bases had received new equipment before the grunts out in the field. They hadn't needed advanced weapons, or armour, or even boots before the ones who actually fought, but they’d got them first. Why should Europe be any different?



But we could afford massive investments, I thought. The Europeans could not afford to make many mistakes. And this aircraft is definitely a mistake.



I felt the aircraft humming to life. “Don’t worry about how you sit,” Éclair advised, before I could turn my seat to face the direction of flight. “When the pilots take off, even I barely notice.”



He was right, I decided. The takeoff was so smooth that I could have been walking down the middle of the plane and been perfectly safe. Éclair turned back to his computer as soon as the aircraft was in the sky, bringing up a private communications network. The French military was in such a mess, I realised slowly, that some units would have no idea where their orders were actually coming from. Maybe the CIA could help by offering Éclair the use of their communications network. It would be impossible for Victor’s men to break into that network and jam it, at least not without taking out the satellites. And that would be an act of war.



“I’ve managed to get through to most of the officers in key positions,” Éclair said, shortly. “They should be able to maintain control of their units when the shit hits the fan. Most of them have already called a low-level alert in response to the nuke in Algeria, so I doubt anyone will notice as the bases are secured. And we’ve ordered the cleaners to leave the bases too.”



I shook my head in disbelief. Who would have thought that a secure military installation hired cleaners who were not only from outside the military, but had never been vetted by anyone? It was insane; pretty much every spy agency in the world knew that a janitor, or a cleaner, could pick up plenty of information just by remaining in the background and keeping his ears open. And allowing them onto military bases! They could carry weapons into the base, produce them at the right moment and start gunning soldiers down before they could defend themselves. Hell, European armies didn't always allow their men to carry weapons on bases!



“But the news from police stations outside the communities isn't good,” Éclair added, a moment later. He seemed to be jumping from point to point, either to confuse me or because he was confused himself. The sheer scale of the looming disaster seemed to have hypnotised a number of his co-conspirators. “We are seeing rumours of mass protest marches being planned in support of the Immigration Law” – he saw my puzzled look – “a law that has just been introduced for debate, whereupon Algerians would be allowed unfettered access to France. Almost every national politician has been called back to Paris for an emergency discussion. Victor won’t find it hard to take them all out.”



“Or co-opt them,” I added. I could easily see a couple of National Front politicians having their feet held to the fire, just to convince them to cooperate. They might even be promised that they could leave the country, along with their families, once the new government was firmly in place. How determined would they be if the alternative was watching their families be tortured to death? “I take it that there’s no sign of him?”



“Nothing obvious, but we have established a link to the CIA’s snooping apparatus,” Éclair said, nodding towards one of the screens. “Plenty of cell phone chatter, all using a civilian-grade encryption program. All thoroughly illegal, of course.”



I snorted. “Isn't plotting a treasonous rebellion illegal too?”



“Treason is only illegal if it fails,” Éclair pointed out. I’d heard an older saying; treason never prospers, because if it does prosper none dare call it treason. “Unfortunately, we may not be ready to act before Victor launches his coup.”



I settled back into my seat and watched as Éclair spoke rapidly to a number of different officers, committing himself to the counter-strike. Most of them seemed to be borderline sympathetic at the very least, but it would only take one of them to betray the entire operation to Victor. God alone knew what would happen then. Maybe Victor would just launch his operation, gambling that the opposition wouldn't be in a position to stop him. Or, if he wanted chaos, maybe he’d give us more time to get organised. Trying to outguess him was a nightmare.



“A protest march has just begun in Marseilles,” a voice said. I jerked awake; how had I fallen asleep? And how long had I been out of it? “We have live feed from the cameras.”



“Show me,” Éclair ordered. He looked over at me as I blinked my eyes, blearily. “I thought you needed the sleep.”



I nodded as the computers came to life, showing the live feed from France’s massive network of CCTV cameras. The streets of Marseilles – I vaguely recognised them from TV programs back when I was a kid – had suddenly become full of people, all young men. If there were any women in the march, I couldn't see them. There was no way that the march had been organised spontaneously. Certainly, the MSM would be fooled, but the banners and American flags (for burning) and the protest stewards would have taken weeks to arrange. And the march seemed to be largely against racism, not against the use of nukes in Algeria ...



“Sympathetic media personalities are already signalling their editors that they have interviews lined up with the march’s leaders,” Éclair said, reading a report. “Naturally, everything they say will be carefully scripted.”



I nodded. Our enemies had learned to manipulate the media well before we’d even realised that we were competing with them in that arena too. The chosen representatives would be calm and reasonable and – politely – brand their opponents racists. They would lull France into a sense of security before the hammer fell. It might not work, after Algeria, but they would certainly try.



“We’re coming into land,” Éclair said. “Once we’re on the ground, you can get some sleep. For the moment, as you Americans say, you're on the benches. You can wait.”



“Understood,” I said. Right now, there was nothing I could do. Besides, I was exhausted. “Just let me know if we’re about to be overrun.”
Chapter Twenty-Four

The waiting room reminded me – absurdly – of a doctor’s surgery, complete with outdated magazines, a small water dispenser and a television set to CNN. I took a moment to watch the bimbo talking head prattling on about how the President had issued an ultimatum to Algeria – open their nuclear plants for inspection or face the consequences – before turning down the volume and activating the cell phone. It buzzed the moment it linked into the secure network, alerting me to nineteen messages that had come in since I’d turned it off and handed it over to Lesage. Langley wanted a few words with me.

“Good God,” Li said, when she picked up the phone. “What happened?”

“Long story,” I said. I sat down and went through the entire story, starting with my arrest and ending with the recovery of intelligence from Algeria. “France is in deep shit.”

“That was true right from the start,” Li said. She sounded more than a little stunned, although I heard a hint of gloating triumph as well. The faction that had refused to send troops to Algeria to hit the terrorist camp would have to explain why the French, of all people, had captured the greatest mass murderer in American history. It would leak and certain officials would end up looking very bad. Or at least stupid. “What the hell were you thinking, fucking around with a nuke?”

“That wasn't my decision,” I said, defensively. “But in any case, we now know that only five warheads went out of Pakistan. One of them is gone and two more were apparently sold.”

“Which raises the question of just who bought them,” Li pointed out. “I haven’t heard of them falling into T-Ball’s hands.”

I nodded. T-Ball was the codename for a highly-classified multinational operation intended to disrupt nuclear terrorism, by any means necessary. Some of the less classified parts of the operation purchased nuclear materials, no questions asked, while others specialised in producing components designed to wreck nuclear facilities. There had been a story about a set of control chips that turned a standard reactor into a breeder reactor, ready to produce vast quantities of fissile material. It was physically impossible, of course, but terrorists didn't actually know that much about nuclear science. In reality, the chips had been outfitted with trackers and the CIA had been able to locate the terrorist base.

“Leave that for the moment,” I said. “The important issue is doing what we can to save France.”

There was a pause. “Washington has already made its intentions clear,” Li said, “no matter how much I might disapprove. France must stand or fall on its own.”

“The situation has changed,” I reminded her. “If the terrorists win, they will have the French nukes under their control – a threat we could not ignore. Even if France falls into civil war, the nukes will still be up for grabs. And if the Russians do invade, we will be looking at them becoming much more formidable within a decade.”

“Particularly if the Europeans and their Arab enemies burn themselves out before the Russians come riding to the rescue,” Li said. She coughed, meaningfully. “I can take the new report to Washington and ...”

“The new government will probably be quite grateful for American assistance,” I said, seriously. “If they do take control, we will have a new set of allies.”

“Washington will say that French gratitude doesn't last very long,” Li pointed out, dryly. “They made their choice back in 2003.”

“The situation is different,” I said. “You can tell Washington that. However, for the moment, we have to track down Victor. Can you help with that?”

“We are trying to monitor cell phone traffic in France,” Li said, an odd admission that elements in the CIA had been watching the situation in the besieged country carefully. “We may be able to help you pin-point terrorist cells, but so far we haven’t been able to locate anything that looks like an HQ.”

I’d be surprised if they found one. The key to creating an effective terrorist organisation is the cell structure, where one cell wouldn't know anything about the other cells. Victor and a couple of others would have to know more, but they were careful to hide themselves. We could break open a dozen cells and yet find nothing that would lead us to the boss.

But the danger of a cell structure, particularly one composed of young and undisciplined men, was that the cells might start to act on their own. Even Victor would have difficulty keeping them under control indefinitely, particularly as the news about the nuke sank in. He might start urging them to act just to keep some degree of control. If he wanted control.

Li broke into my thoughts. “I can continue to slip you information from the monitoring stations,” she said. “But any other form of help, particularly military help, will need permission from the White House. I shall take it to my superiors at once.”

“Understood,” I said. If nothing else, access to the CIA’s intelligence feed would be very helpful. “And please contact me if you locate Victor.”

I closed the phone, walked back into the briefing room and told Éclair what Li had said. The Frenchman looked grim, although not particularly surprised; he’d already digested Washington’s reluctance to act before discovering just how far Victor was prepared to go to accomplish his ends. Lesage looked less sanguine, muttering darkly under his breath about Anglo-Saxon treachery when France faced her gravest test since 1940. I decided not to mention the fact that France had failed that test spectacularly.

“We’ll deploy to a disused airbase near Paris,” Lesage said, studying the map. “If we’re lucky, we will serve as a mobile reserve.”

“Good,” Éclair said. “Once you’re on the ground, we can start moving against the corrupt and treacherous officers.”

I was pushed to one side to wait as the Marquis prepared to go back into action. It gave me some time to use my cell phone to study the reports from CIA analysts, who had noted an increase in French road traffic heading into Paris from the south. Victor’s plan had called for seizing Paris and eliminating the more stubborn members of the government as quickly as possible, so I deduced that he was moving reinforcements into the city. Without roadblocks and a determined attempt to clear out the poorer parts of Paris, there was little the French could do about it. All Éclair could do was make his preparations and hope like hell that he got his precautions into place ahead of Victor’s own movements.

The reports from Algeria continued to grow more ominous. Apparently, the Islamist Government had refused to accept any blame for the nuke and were claiming that the warhead had actually been smuggled into their country by an American SF team who had used it to blow up an army base and create an excuse to invade. The fact that Washington had declared war on all Islamist governments – and therefore didn't need to manufacture an excuse to invade – seemed to have been lost on them. CNN and FOX both questioned the Algerian story; WebTV had somehow accessed the reports from atmosphere-sampling aircraft and told the entire world that the nuke had come from Pakistan. So far, no one seemed to have realised that the French were involved, but that would change. The Islamists were already demanding that France played host to refugees while they coped with the fallout.

I switched to the French MSM and got a dose of heavy-duty propaganda, shat out by someone with more imagination than actual common sense. It was France’s duty to take in the refugees, the media claimed, even though they might be radioactive. France had committed vast sins against Algeria and should do whatever she could to make up for them. The fact that very few people in France today remembered the days when Algeria had been a French colony – let alone fought in the war – definitely seemed to have been lost on them. But then, guilt had always been an effective way for people to get others to surrender to them.

The internet seemed to have taken a different line, although there were so many voices that it was impossible to pick out a common factor. The refuges were coming from a country where a nuke had detonated; they would be covered in radioactive dust. Anyone who went near them would be rendered sterile. And that was one of the saner rants. One person went so far as to claim that Algeria had deliberately detonated the nuke on their own territory to provide an excuse to invade France. Apparently, it was all part of an extremely cunning plan.

“Time to fly,” Lesage said. I switched off the cell phone and stood up, feeling oddly useless. I could do nothing until they located Victor – and even then, I might not be able to go after him. “We have to be in France before someone manages to shut down the ATC.”

I nodded. The reports had said that thousands of small boats were leaving Algeria, along with hundreds of aircraft, all heading to Europe. Even if the French Government found the steel to order the French Navy to keep them out, it would be difficult; the majority of the ships were in the Atlantic ports, rather than anywhere closer to Algeria. It would be days before they could arrive in force. Maybe the US would be willing to help out, but it would depend on Washington’s decision. God alone knew which way the decision would go.

There were more aircraft on the field this time, roaring to life and taxiing down the runway before staggering their way into the air. I saw a long line of soldiers heading into the final aircraft, followed by a handful of people who were definitely civilians. Lesage saw my questioning look and explained that they were people who refused to stay on Corsica – which had called up the militia to deal with the incoming tide of refugees – when France was in mortal peril. I just hoped they weren’t going from the frying pan into the fire.

“This way,” Lesage ordered, pulling me towards an aircraft that looked like a luxury executive jet. “The Director wishes you to join him on the flight.”

Inside, I was immediately reminded of Air Force One, although it was a smaller and less capable aircraft. The stewardess wore a low-cut blouse and a miniskirt that barely avoided showing the lower half of her buttocks. I wondered, absently, what the soldiers made of it as I was escorted into a tiny command centre, complete with computers, a set of secure telephones and a television tuned permanently to a French television station. Éclair was sitting in front of one of the computers, speaking into a headset. I took the seat the stewardess pointed me to and strapped in.

“EUROFOR had a choice between raising new infantry regiments or buying a handful of command aircraft for senior officers,” Éclair said, by way of explanation. “The bureaucrats decided that it made sense to buy the aircraft, rather than having additional soldiers – after all, when were we going to war again?”

He rolled his eyes. “And while these aircraft are actually quite capable, a single man with a MANPAD can blow them out of the sky,” he added. “But back then, shooting down the command aircraft could only have improved matters.”

I could easily believe it. Back home, units on bases had received new equipment before the grunts out in the field. They hadn't needed advanced weapons, or armour, or even boots before the ones who actually fought, but they’d got them first. Why should Europe be any different?

But we could afford massive investments, I thought. The Europeans could not afford to make many mistakes. And this aircraft is definitely a mistake.

I felt the aircraft humming to life. “Don’t worry about how you sit,” Éclair advised, before I could turn my seat to face the direction of flight. “When the pilots take off, even I barely notice.”

He was right, I decided. The takeoff was so smooth that I could have been walking down the middle of the plane and been perfectly safe. Éclair turned back to his computer as soon as the aircraft was in the sky, bringing up a private communications network. The French military was in such a mess, I realised slowly, that some units would have no idea where their orders were actually coming from. Maybe the CIA could help by offering Éclair the use of their communications network. It would be impossible for Victor’s men to break into that network and jam it, at least not without taking out the satellites. And that would be an act of war.

“I’ve managed to get through to most of the officers in key positions,” Éclair said, shortly. “They should be able to maintain control of their units when the shit hits the fan. Most of them have already called a low-level alert in response to the nuke in Algeria, so I doubt anyone will notice as the bases are secured. And we’ve ordered the cleaners to leave the bases too.”

I shook my head in disbelief. Who would have thought that a secure military installation hired cleaners who were not only from outside the military, but had never been vetted by anyone? It was insane; pretty much every spy agency in the world knew that a janitor, or a cleaner, could pick up plenty of information just by remaining in the background and keeping his ears open. And allowing them onto military bases! They could carry weapons into the base, produce them at the right moment and start gunning soldiers down before they could defend themselves. Hell, European armies didn't always allow their men to carry weapons on bases!

“But the news from police stations outside the communities isn't good,” Éclair added, a moment later. He seemed to be jumping from point to point, either to confuse me or because he was confused himself. The sheer scale of the looming disaster seemed to have hypnotised a number of his co-conspirators. “We are seeing rumours of mass protest marches being planned in support of the Immigration Law” – he saw my puzzled look – “a law that has just been introduced for debate, whereupon Algerians would be allowed unfettered access to France. Almost every national politician has been called back to Paris for an emergency discussion. Victor won’t find it hard to take them all out.”

“Or co-opt them,” I added. I could easily see a couple of National Front politicians having their feet held to the fire, just to convince them to cooperate. They might even be promised that they could leave the country, along with their families, once the new government was firmly in place. How determined would they be if the alternative was watching their families be tortured to death? “I take it that there’s no sign of him?”

“Nothing obvious, but we have established a link to the CIA’s snooping apparatus,” Éclair said, nodding towards one of the screens. “Plenty of cell phone chatter, all using a civilian-grade encryption program. All thoroughly illegal, of course.”

I snorted. “Isn't plotting a treasonous rebellion illegal too?”

“Treason is only illegal if it fails,” Éclair pointed out. I’d heard an older saying; treason never prospers, because if it does prosper none dare call it treason. “Unfortunately, we may not be ready to act before Victor launches his coup.”

I settled back into my seat and watched as Éclair spoke rapidly to a number of different officers, committing himself to the counter-strike. Most of them seemed to be borderline sympathetic at the very least, but it would only take one of them to betray the entire operation to Victor. God alone knew what would happen then. Maybe Victor would just launch his operation, gambling that the opposition wouldn't be in a position to stop him. Or, if he wanted chaos, maybe he’d give us more time to get organised. Trying to outguess him was a nightmare.

“A protest march has just begun in Marseilles,” a voice said. I jerked awake; how had I fallen asleep? And how long had I been out of it? “We have live feed from the cameras.”

“Show me,” Éclair ordered. He looked over at me as I blinked my eyes, blearily. “I thought you needed the sleep.”

I nodded as the computers came to life, showing the live feed from France’s massive network of CCTV cameras. The streets of Marseilles – I vaguely recognised them from TV programs back when I was a kid – had suddenly become full of people, all young men. If there were any women in the march, I couldn't see them. There was no way that the march had been organised spontaneously. Certainly, the MSM would be fooled, but the banners and American flags (for burning) and the protest stewards would have taken weeks to arrange. And the march seemed to be largely against racism, not against the use of nukes in Algeria ...

“Sympathetic media personalities are already signalling their editors that they have interviews lined up with the march’s leaders,” Éclair said, reading a report. “Naturally, everything they say will be carefully scripted.”

I nodded. Our enemies had learned to manipulate the media well before we’d even realised that we were competing with them in that arena too. The chosen representatives would be calm and reasonable and – politely – brand their opponents racists. They would lull France into a sense of security before the hammer fell. It might not work, after Algeria, but they would certainly try.

“We’re coming into land,” Éclair said. “Once we’re on the ground, you can get some sleep. For the moment, as you Americans say, you're on the benches. You can wait.”

“Understood,” I said. Right now, there was nothing I could do. Besides, I was exhausted. “Just let me know if we’re about to be overrun.”

 

Riveting story line - looking forward to ready the rest of it.

 

Chapter Twenty-Five

It started in Paris.

We watched it all unfold, helpless to interfere. In the communities, where the police had been subverted long ago, they blurred into the mass of fighters Victor’s people had assembled and trained for the terrorists. Weapons were handed out, barricades were thrown up and people who might have had dubious loyalties were arrested. I wouldn't have given two rusty cents for their chances of survival in the future. Everyone they arrested was almost certain to be executed after the new government was firmly in power.

Outside the communities, police stations came under sudden savage attack. Suicide bombers walked inside and detonated their charges, their last words a scream to a God who would reject them for taking their own lives. In the aftermath, small teams of heavily-armed fighters ran forward to secure the stations, murdering any policemen who had survived the blasts. Armouries were secured, communications networks knocked down; there was no hope of effective resistance before it was already too late. Howling mobs, kept carefully under control by armed men, advanced out of the communities, trying to intimidate the rest of the city’s population. Those who came out on the streets would be brutalised and then released to spread the word that the old order had come to an end.

Smaller teams of armed men assaulted the government and military headquarters within the city. Some of the guards had already been subverted; they opened the gates to their fellows, who stormed into the buildings and captured everyone. The insurgents had planned carefully; the emergency procedures that should have allowed the senior government ministers to escape were countered, preventing them from making it out of the city. One by one, they were captured, in several cases after their close protection details had turned on them. They were handcuffed and marched off to one of the designated prisoner holding areas. Victor well knew the value of having someone from the old government announce the transition to the new; he wouldn't allow them to die until they had served their purpose. The training he’d put the recruits through had done well, I had to admit. Very few of the fighters chose to act against orders, purely for the pleasure of striking back at their hated oppressors.

Paris convulsed as the chaos spread. Victor hadn't just concentrated on the government; teams of armed men went after the infrastructure, everything from the waterworks to power plants. As they were overrun, Paris plunged into darkness, making it far harder for the citizens to organise any resistance. It wouldn't have made any difference – Victor wouldn't have hesitated to gun down protesters – but he wasn't taking chances. Besides, holding the waterworks would make it easier for them to keep the population under control.

The same scene was repeated in almost all of the major French cities. In some, the Arabs hadn't managed to get enough people in to secure the cities, so they lashed out and caused as much damage as they could before withdrawing into the darkness. There were so many attacks that the hardened military command network – and the CIA network, for that matter – threatened to collapse under the weight of the reports. Even we, in our secured airbase near Paris, couldn't keep track of everything; what hope did isolated policemen on the streets have of seeing the bigger picture? They couldn't; the attacks had fragmented the government and police, breaking them down into thousands of hapless individuals, each one fighting their own hopeless battles. Some policemen apparently deserted and went to see to their families, hoping that the chaos would pass them by. I wouldn't have given two rusty cents for their chances either.

Chaos raged across the different military bases near Paris as loyalists fought with insurgents. Éclair had thrown caution to the winds as the first reports came in and broadcast a general warning, but it had been too late to save many officers who might have remained loyal. The Arab officers took control of their posts, shot or captured native French officers, and prepared their troops to advance on Paris. Not every Arab soldier agreed to follow treacherous orders, I was relieved to note, but it made no difference. They were simply executed by their fellows, who then prepared their vehicles for the advance.

The bases that had received some warning did better, although not all of the potential insurgents were rounded up before the shit hit the fan. Victor had planned for some response, I realised, as reports came in from a dozen airbases. Ground crewmen who were ethnic French had launched attacks on pilots, often destroying aircraft and ammunition supplies on the ground. The French Air Force included a large number of modern aircraft, capable of holding their own against almost anything in the sky, but they were easy targets on the ground. Victor had known that most of the aircraft were useless to his forces, so he’d ordered them destroyed. I watched the numbers mount up and shuddered. The French Air Force had been effectively crippled.

Heavy fighting broke out in the South as the army of insurgents attempted to advance on the military bases near the city. Most of those bases had been warned in time, thankfully, and the soldiers were ready to repel attack. Even so, the fighting threatened to spread out of control, while a handful of sleeper agents caused a great deal of confusion that cost lives. I couldn't understand the military logic until it occurred to me that Victor wanted the fighting to spread, getting as many people on both sides killed as possible. Or maybe it had been part of the original plan. Revolutionary movements work fine until they actually win, whereupon they start fighting over the spoils. I could easily see someone as heartless as the Butcher of San Francisco plotting to have anyone who might not embrace his version of Islam sent out to die bravely against French troops.

Larger detachments of insurgents seized civilian airports, aircraft and pilots. It occurred to me that they intended to start using the aircraft to bring in troops from Algeria, despite the chaos threatening to grip that country, and then I realised that they intended to use the aircraft as cruise missiles. Besides, the Sixth Fleet was currently blockading the coast of Algeria and none of the ships would have any hesitation about firing on civilian aircraft. They knew what was happening in France, even if they weren't sure of who was going to win. I knew that the White House would enforce the blockade, even if they did nothing else. We knew better than to let Third World states get away with defying us these days.

The nightmare raged on as the French population slowly realised that their country was finally collapsing. Uncounted thousands tried to flee Paris and the other cities, despite the presence of armed insurgents on the streets. We picked up hundreds of horror stories through listening to the enemy command network; men gunned down in the streets, women raped before being executed themselves. They were trying to spread terror, I realised, and they were succeeding. The radio stations were taken over and started to broadcast orders for the civilians to remain in their homes, while security forces coped with the chaos. It was intended to lure the population into a false sense of security, I guessed. They’d be less likely to panic if they thought the mobs were going to be quickly crushed.

I shook my head as an endless stream of reports came in from all over Europe. Car bombs, suicide attacks and commando raids, each one pushing Europe right to the limit. Germany and Italy suffered a series of devastating attacks against military bases, while mobs ran riot in their cities and their governments tottered on the verge of collapse. Spain, already under martial law, staggered under a wave of renewed blows, while Britain convulsed as riots spread through her cities. The Netherlands, effectively already under Islamic control, went under at the first push. Smaller attacks struck Scandinavia, fuelling the chaos and making sure that they wouldn't be able to send help to France or Southern Europe. And Greece, long balanced on the very edge of chaos, fell into madness.

“We have a number of vehicles making their way into Paris,” someone shouted. I looked over at the display and nodded. The Arab troops were finally moving to set up barricades on the outskirts of the city, trapping the rest of the civilian population in Paris. They’d rapidly start to starve, which would make them less inclined to fight. “One detachment seems to be making their way towards us.”

“Bad,” Lesage said, grimly. The Marquis had their gunships and antitank missiles, but they would be heavily outnumbered if the Arab troops came after them. “Order the gunships to take them out if they get within a mile of our position.”

I blinked in surprise, then realised that the Arabs might not have realised that we were there. We certainly hadn't announced ourselves to the ATC, or what remained of it, let alone the French government. If they didn't come too close to the DST’s airbase, we might remain undetected. I didn't know what five hundred infantry troops and nine gunships could do against a much larger army, but losing the advantage of surprise would make it harder for us to do anything. The moment they discovered us, they would throw their trained troops at the airbase, attempting to destroy us before we could pose a threat.

“I think they’re taking up position here,” an operator said, pointing to the map. “That would allow them advance warning of any troop movements from the south.”

“If that were possible,” Lesage said. I must have looked puzzled, because he deigned to explain. “The insurgents have wiped out a shitload of fuel and vehicles, even in the loyalist camps. It will take weeks to get a northwards thrust organised, which will give them time to get organised. And then there would be a devastating war burning through France’s heartland.”

He sounded calm, but others in the command aircraft looked worried, as if they were on the verge of collapse. I doubted that Americans would have done much better, if there was a colossal uprising in Washington and the other cities, while most of the military reeled under a series of precisely-timed blows. They were watching their entire country being torn apart – even if they did manage to save France, the country would never be the same again. I looked back at the live feed from one of the CIA satellites, showing fires blazing through several cities, and shivered.

The refugees would flee, in hopes of finding food and drink and safety. They’d spread out across the land like locusts, tearing through farmland ... farmland that was largely unprotected because the farmers weren't allowed weapons and there were no troops to spare to assist them. Every last scrap of food would be eaten, then the population would start to starve. Idly, I wondered how long it would be before cannibalism reared its ugly head. There had certainly been reports of cannibals from famine zones in the past, although I had no idea if they were actually true. But then, eating human flesh was taboo, so much so that it would probably have been covered up.

“We broke the force attacking us,” a voice said. I smiled in relief as I realised that it came from one of the largest army bases in the south. “They’re fleeing back to the city now – request permission to attack the refugee camps before they get reorganised.”

“Denied,” Éclair said. He seemed to have taken overall command, although with the command network in tatters it was partly meaningless. “Firebomb them if you can get aircraft over there; if not, conserve your strength and prepare for future operations.”

I made a face. There had been thousands upon thousands of refugees from Islamic Algeria – and Libya – and the French had tried to cram them all into massive refugee camps. It shouldn't have surprised anyone that Islamism spread rapidly, along with a burning hatred for France ... the camps had been a powder keg, ready to explode on Victor’s command. Now, the population of those camps was tearing through France, terrorising the natives. I had a feeling that Victor would eventually have to deal with them, but for the moment they were yet another distraction.

The big situation map was updated every few minutes, but no one was sure just how accurate its information was. A howling mob had attacked the DST headquarters in Paris, which had been defended by former paratroopers; they’d fought bravely for several hours before finally being overrun. It had been long enough to get a few operatives out into the city, but all of their reports were grim. Victor’s troops were establishing control over most of the urban territory, something that had to come as a relief to the citizens. They’d even hung a handful of their own people for rape and other crimes.

I shook my head, tiredly. The French had effectively lost control of their country, the only remaining loyalists a handful of military units. Most of the cities had fallen into Victor’s hands, along with a sizable chunk of the remaining military. I wondered, absently, just how long the French could hold out; they’d folded in 1940 after the Germans had kicked their ass and that situation hadn't been quite as dire. But then, the French Government had foolishly believed that they might have been able to carve out a place for themselves in a German-dominated Europe. Would they make the same mistake now?

Dawn started to rise over France, revealing streets shattered by riots and heavily-armed insurgent troops patrolling the streets. The DST observers in Paris reported that everyone captured in the government complex had been moved to the stadium, where they were kept under heavy guard, while ordinary citizens were being told to stay off the streets. Those who disobeyed, for whatever reason, were driven back to their homes with blows. One reported an elderly man beaten to death for disobeying orders. The first few days of an occupation were always the most dangerous, I knew – it had certainly been true of Islamabad, even though we’d learned a hell of a lot from occupying Iraq – as the occupying troops would be jumpy and the locals wouldn't quite know what was going on. But after that ...?

I shuddered. It was likely to get worse.

“The Navy reported in,” Éclair said, speaking to one of the Generals in the South. “They took some heavy blows at their bases, but most of the ships are secure. There weren't many Arabs on them, thankfully. The carriers are ready to launch aircraft in support of the army.”

I looked over at the map and wondered just how long that would last. The simple problem with modern warfare lies in a military swear word; logistics. Every single item in the French inventory was effectively irreplaceable right now; once they fired off a missile, the missile would be gone. It can take years to build up the kind of stockpiles needed for modern warfare and the insurgents had captured or destroyed a sizable percentage of the French Army’s supplies. Even bullets would be difficult to obtain.

Back when NATO was a going concern, the Europeans could have purchased bullets and other military supplies from us. Now ... I could easily see Washington refusing to sell anything to the French, if only because we might need the supplies for ourselves. Éclair’s resistance might not last more than a few weeks, before they simply ran out of weapons and equipment. Victor’s forces used primitive weapons, but in some ways they had an advantage. And given how long they’d been planning their uprising, they might have enough bullets salted away to last them for years.

Maybe not, I told myself. We’d calculated ammunition expenditure in Iraq, Iran and Pakistan carefully and we’d always got it wrong. The estimates had been grievously low; if the bureaucrats had their way, we would have run out of ammunition halfway through the fighting. I really couldn’t see Victor doing much better ... but then, it didn't really matter. All that mattered was outlasting the remains of the French military.

“See how many cruise missiles they have left,” Éclair ordered. Using the missiles on Paris and other enemy bases would cause considerable disruption, I hoped. But then, Victor and his allies would know better than to make themselves too obvious. There was always the possibility of Washington offering direct support to the French. “What did London have to say?”

“They can provide tanker support, but not much else,” an officer reported. “The Brits have their own problems.”

I glanced at the CIA feed. Rioting in London, car bombs at nearly all of their military bases ... and an assassination attempt on the Prime Minister. The British did indeed have their own problems. But they might also be the only European state to come out of this intact. I wondered if I should advise Éclair to head for Britain with the remaining French military, before deciding that he wouldn't go. He wanted to save his country.

But how?

“Picking up a broadcast on State TV,” someone said. I rolled my eyes. They’d shut off the main power grid, so how would the population be able to watch it? Or maybe the broadcast wasn't meant for the civilians, but us. “I’m putting it on the main screen.”

I watched, feeling my heart sink. Victor hadn't had any trouble finding a Petain, not when he’d arrested the families of most French politicians. The man on the television, urging the remaining military forces to accept the new order, was putting up a good show, but I could tell that he was deeply worried. What sort of threats had been used to make him cooperate? I could guess.

“Right,” Lesage said. “We are not going to listen to him. But what the hell do we do now?”

“The only thing we can,” I said. “We kill Victor.”

 

Chapter Twenty-Six

There is a curious little truism about human affairs that runs, basically, people will see their own group as being composed of individuals, but will regard every other group as being one vast hive mind. A Muslim would recognise that Sunni and Shia Muslims weren't the same – and there are plenty of smaller offshoot Islamic groups, like the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned Wahhabis – but a non-Muslim might not draw the distinction. For that matter, foreigners might have problems understanding American politics because the casual observer finds it hard to understand the different factions within the Republican, Democratic, American and Reform parties. From the outside, they look like one entity.

It is also true of insurgent groups. A common enemy – the United States or the local dictator – provides the glue that holds the group together. When the enemy is defeated, the insurgents will often fission into other groups, which will then start fighting each other. The Bolsheviks weren’t the only group that opposed the Tsar of Russia back in 1917, they were merely the ones who won the civil war that followed the Tsar’s defeat. And, being winners, they got to write the history books. The same happened after the Iranian Revolution, the Arab Spring and the Saudi Uprising.

“You think that you can find and kill Victor?” Éclair asked. “He has to be hiding somewhere in Paris.”

I nodded. The CIA had been helping us to track enemy communications, but Victor was cunning enough not to be too close to the transmitter. Pity, really; one cruise missile strike might have decapitated the insurgency. It did occur to me that Victor might have left command and control in someone else’s hands and walked away, into the countryside, to leave the insurgency to stand or fall on its own, but he wouldn't have trusted someone else with that much power. Besides, I had a feeling that he would want to enjoy his success.

“Right now,” I said, “Victor has bound several different groups together. But that won’t last. We’ve already seen his forces striking out at their enemies, even ones who are – technically – allied to him.” I nodded towards one of the screens, which showed a burning mosque in Marseilles. “That mosque was Shia; they killed the Imam, then burned the mosque to the ground. It won't be long before they start fighting each other even with Victor’s presence.”

“Chancy,” Éclair pointed out. “And we don’t have the firepower up north to break into Paris.”

Lesage nodded in confirmation. The Arab troops had been deploying with reasonable skill, emplacing antitank teams and recon patrols out along the roads leading to Paris. They wouldn't have been able to do more than slow down the remains of the French military, if they’d had time to deploy properly. Instead, lack of supplies would curtail their operations sharply, unless they managed to call on help from the United States. And I already knew that wasn't going to happen.

“We could send an SF team,” Lesage suggested. “Most of them remained loyal ...”

“No,” I said. The French would need all the soldiers they could assemble for retaking their country. “No SF team. Just me.”

Éclair nodded, slowly. Lesage, who knew much less about me, was more inclined to object.

“You’re going on your own?” He demanded. “That’s suicide!”

“I’ve been into the belly of the beast before,” I said. “Give me some makeup, a few props and no one will know the difference between me and one of them.”

“Including our own people,” Lesage pointed out. “You could be gunned down by your own side.”

“It’s a risk I’ve taken before,” I said. Other CIA operatives had been killed – accidentally – by fellow Americans, either through drone strikes or even SF raids. Information on deep-cover operatives was always tightly restricted; none of the killers had ever known the truth, certainly not before the operation was launched. “And it is one that I can take again.”

I nodded towards the map, which showed Paris marked in bright red. “Time is running out,” I reminded them. “If they remain united long enough for your forces to run out of fuel and ammunition, you lose. France will die. Send me in, while you muster your forces for a counterattack. And see if you can bargain with Washington.”

“We have the Butcher,” Éclair said, “but what else do we have that they want?”

“The nukes,” I guessed. “They’ll want you to make damn sure that your nukes are secured.”

I saw Éclair exchange a long glance with Lesage. Nukes were what ensured that a country would remain independent, if push came to shove. But then, that only worked against foreign invasion. Nukes hadn't kept the Communists in power in the USSR – and they certainly hadn’t protected the French Government. Once, there had been a theory that stated that a nuclear-armed country would always be responsible and sane. Pakistan and San Francisco had put an end to that delusion.

And France might be on the verge of going the same way.

The White House had to be panicking over what might happen to the French nukes. Unlike most of the European Union, the French had kept lavishing money on their nukes right throughout the economic crisis. Their missiles might just be capable of evading the ABM defences around America, their warheads plunging down to wipe a dozen cities off the map. I wouldn't have been surprised to discover that an SSN was already shadowing the French missile boats, ready for the order to sink them before they could be recalled and handed over to the new government. The order might be ready to go at any moment, held back only by fear that the nationalists would fire the remaining missiles before they could be taken out.

“We could do that,” Éclair said, finally. The cynic in me wondered if they saw the nukes as their ultimate fallback plan. Perhaps they could trade them to the new government in exchange for being allowed to leave the country, along with their families. “I’ll speak to Washington.”

“The Embassy was destroyed,” I reminded him. “Washington is going to be pissed about that, if nothing else. It might work in your favour.”

The memory made me shudder. After losing an Ambassador to a howling mob, the Embassy guards had been given new ROE that allowed them to open fire if mobs came over the wall. The Marines in Paris had fought hard, but they’d been trapped right from the start; eventually, they’d run out of ammunition and the Embassy had been overrun. Their fate – and that of the staff – had been recorded by watching cameras, then uploaded to the internet. Washington would be furious. But what could they do?

“We’ll see,” Éclair said. He looked over at Lesage. “See that he gets properly equipped for his mission.”

Lesage escorted me into another room, then gave me a puzzled look. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yes,” I said, flatly. Did they have to keep asking. “I will need a handful of supplies.”

One advantage to the DST’s paranoia, I discovered, was that most of their facilities – including their training centre – were some distance from Paris. It was relatively simple to obtain some equipment, including skin tint and a French uniform that proclaimed me to be a Colonel. Colonel Barras was a half-breed, the child of an Algerian father and a French mother, who – according to his file – had spent half of his life in Algeria, which explained why his French was pathetic. He’d also been appointed as a political officer to a nearby army base, only to be arrested and then executed by one of Éclair’s rebel officers. My story was that I had managed to escape and was heading to Paris to report in to the insurgent commanders.

“The real Barras spoke better French than you,” Lesage said, as my fingerprints were altered to match my cover. “If he hadn't been able to speak at least some French, his patrons would never have been able to get him into uniform. And he was never trusted with anything important.”

I shook my head in disbelief. Affirmative action had been bad enough in the US, but it was downright crazy in France. But maybe it wasn't so surprising; the Arab officers had come from a culture where nepotism was not only expected, but keenly encouraged. After all, who could you trust if you couldn't trust your own flesh and blood? And the French had had enough of that attitude themselves to let it slip past until it was too late to stop. What sort of idiot believed that a half-breed who could barely speak French was capable of serving in any position?

But then, I decided, a political officer didn't actually have to do very much.

“Your cell phone might be recognised,” Lesage said. “Instead, we can give you a modified radio, one that an army officer would be expected to carry. Or we could dig up another cell phone for you ...”

“I’ll stick with the radio,” I said. Perhaps I would have gone with the communications implant for this mission, except there was no time to go back to the States and have the implant inserted into my skin. Langley might have refused to allow me to interfere further if I’d asked. “And weapons?”

“Standard PAMAS G1,” Lesage said, passing me a pistol and a couple of clips of ammunition. The weapon was actually a modified Beretta 92, comparable to the others I’d used while working for the CIA. I would have no trouble using it. “I could find you an assault rifle, but you might have to explain it to them when they capture you.”

“Leave it here,” I said. He was right; the insurgents might ask where I’d found it. Barras shouldn't have been able to simply take one. “Anything else?”

Lesage picked a small matchbox-sized device off the table and passed it to me. I opened it up, to reveal a smaller device inside, no bigger than the head of a pin. “Transponder,” Lesage explained, as I studied it. “If you put it close to the rebel HQ, a cruise missile could home in on it, if you couldn't get in yourself.”

I considered it briefly. Having it found would be disastrous, assuming that it was recognised – and I had to assume that Victor’s elite would recognise it for what it was. And I could use the radio to call in strikes, if necessary. But on the other hand, I might be unable to get into Victor’s headquarters. A cruise missile strike might provide all the division I could possibly need.

“We have a pair of rigged shoes,” Lesage added. “You can hide it there.”

“Right,” I said. I checked the transponder, making sure I knew how to use it – and ensuring that it wasn't active right now. It wouldn't be the first time someone thought they knew better than the person on the ground. “Do you have an updated map of their positions?”

“Back in the situation room,” Lesage said. “Are you going to take a car?”

“I can hijack one,” I said. France had been subsidizing the price of fuel, after all. “A military vehicle might make them start asking questions.”

“There are some civilian vehicles nearby,” Lesage suggested. “Take your pick.”

He walked me to the edge of the airbase, where nervous soldiers watched for signs of trouble, then held out his hand. “Good luck,” he said, as I shook it gravely. “I’d suggest evading the nearest enemy troops, if possible. They may have their suspicions about this place.”

“Just tell the gunships to ignore me,” I replied. “I don’t want to be blown up before I complete the mission.”

I felt oddly free for the first time in days as I walked away from the base, heading towards the small unnamed hamlet that had housed some of the DST airbase staff. They'd been evacuated back to Corsica once Éclair had decided that the rebels were unlikely to be flying aircraft, although there had been some reports of MANPADS being fired at French airliners in the early hours of the insurgency. The CIA had confirmed that at least one airliner had gone down near Calais. There was no word on what had happened to the passengers, but if they’d crashed into the darkened sea and SAR aircraft were completely out of the picture, I doubted that they had survived. One more atrocity to blame on Victor – and the bastards who were ripping Islam apart.

The hamlet itself was beautiful, so much so that I stopped and stared for a long moment. A handful of tiny houses, surrounded by greenery; it was like stepping into a bygone age, back before the Second World War. I’d always thought that Old France didn't exist any longer, outside movies, and yet here it was, so close to Paris itself. Why didn't the French consider their native culture to be worth protecting, I asked myself; why had they allowed outsiders to tear the fabric of their country apart? I pushed the thought aside as I located a suitable vehicle, broke the window to open the door and hotwired the engine. It roared to life as I sat down behind the wheel and started to drive out of the hamlet.

I’d memorised a road map while making my preparations for the mission, but I rapidly found myself lost and hopelessly confused. If it hadn’t been for the pillars of smoke rising up to the north, in the direction of Paris, I might have had some problems. Most modern vehicles had an inbuilt GPS system, but the satellite network no longer seemed to be working. I puzzled over that as I finally reached the motorway that led towards Paris and started to head up towards the city. The insurgency shouldn't have been able to cripple the satellites. ASAT technology only belonged to governments.

Maybe they just took out the control station on the ground, I told myself. Driving in France was normally easy, but the motorway was strewn with abandoned cars. I couldn't help realising that a number of them sported bullet holes. I looked from side to side, hoping to see some signs of life, but the entire scene was deserted. Where the hell was everyone? I saw a man lying on the ground and slowed down, then saw that someone had blown away half of his skull. Had the insurgents given chase or had the captured army vehicles run into the civilians and simply opened fire? It was quite possible.

My suspicions were confirmed a moment later when I saw a car that had been crushed under a great weight. Civilians rarely realised just how fragile their vehicles were compared to tanks; a single tank could smash the average car flat. I'd known American tankers who had taken delight in crushing cars; no doubt the Arab tankers had felt the same way. And now they could do whatever they liked to spread terror amongst the civilian population. I shuddered as I saw red liquid pooling under the vehicle, suggesting that someone had been inside the car when it had been destroyed. Whoever had done that had to be laughing his ass off as he made his way towards Paris. Somehow, I doubted the other Arabs had done anything to stop him.

The smoke grew darker as I drew closer to Paris, wondering just when I would run into the blockade. It was possible that I’d simply been ignored by their recon elements, but logically they had learned from the French – and as much as we loved mocking the French, their army had once been quite competent. American troops would not have let an unidentified vehicle so close to the blockade without checking it out, preferably somewhere well away from fixed positions. Quite a few soldiers had died when a car bomb had been allowed to come too close to a checkpoint before the terrorists had detonated it.

I caught sight of a handful of people walking away from the city, on the other side of the road. They were all women, I noticed, and they all looked traumatized. Two of them were bleeding ... I wanted to stop and help them, but there was no time. For once, I had to put the mission first, whatever else happened. Victor had to be stopped. Besides, the girls didn't seem too pleased to see me. One them even made a one-fingered gesture at my car. I guess the disguise must have worked.

I hit the brakes as I saw a set of tanks in the distance. The French Army had produced their own version of the modified Abrams we used for fighting in urban environments; it bristled with machine guns, gas nozzles and riot form hoses. It wasn't well-designed to face another tank, but it would tear apart my car as if it were made of paper. A line of troops, all wearing French uniforms with green armbands, appeared from behind the tank, weapons in hand. They were all Arab. There weren't even any half-breeds like Barras among them.

It shouldn't have surprised me, let alone disappointed me. But it did. Islam was designed to avoid racism; it should have welcomed anyone, no matter the colour of their skin. And yet the Arabs had a fair claim to being the most racist people in the world. I wondered, absently, if they realised what sort of message they were sending, then I decided that they didn't care.

“GET OUT OF THE CAR,” a loudspeaker bellowed, in Arabic. It struck me as odd, then I realised that they were using knowledge of Arabic to separate friend from foe. They must have forgotten that there were quite a few French officers who spoke Arabic. “GET OUT OF THE CAR WITH YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR.”

I smiled inwardly, turned off the engine, and opened the door, climbing out into the middle of the road. This was what I lived for; outwitting the bastards who were destroying my religion. They wouldn't know what had hit them ...

Showtime, I thought, and grinned.

 

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Barras would not be scared, I had decided. He would be indignant. How dare these low-ranking soldiers block his path?

I showed no trace of fear as I marched forward, glaring at the young officer in command. Judging from his expression, this was his first real solo assignment; he might not have commanded troops on deployment, outside exercises, ever since joining the military. I recognised the appearance of a young officer who felt as if he were in over his head and felt a moment of sympathy. Mutiny is habit-forming and his part of the French Army had mutinied once already. Discipline was probably a joke.

“I am Colonel Barras,” I snapped, as I stopped and glared at him. “I am on an important mission to report to the Commander of the Faithful. Why are you blocking my path?”

The real Barras had talked when threatened with torture, confessing that his task had been to blow up the armoury and disarm as many soldiers as possible. He'd also told us a great deal about how the insurgency command structure was organised, at least in general terms; they hadn't trusted him with specific details. I couldn't imagine why.

“We have orders to inspect all vehicles heading to Paris,” the officer finally stammered. He had been conditioned to respond to senior officers, after all, and Barras was senior to him in both command structures. “You cannot take a vehicle into the city.”

I fixed him with a gimlet stare. “And why not?”

“The infidels are being denied transport,” the officer explained. He meant the rest of the French population, I reminded myself. I would have attached the label to his little band. “We are securing the city. All vehicles are to remain outside the blockade until the city is secure.”

“Right,” I said, still in Arabic. “In that case, I will leave my car with you and walk in to report to the Commander myself.”

I turned and marched back to the car before he could say a word, silently placing a bet with myself that he wouldn’t say anything to object. Someone so insecure wouldn't push too hard; even we had problems priming junior officers to stand up to their superiors. There were no shortage of idiots who believed that a higher rank meant that their subordinates should bow and scrape before them, while bowing and scraping in front of their superiors. At least we’d managed to get an agreement that senior officers should have combat experience before being promoted above a certain level. Combat experience did tend to separate the men from the goats.

He said nothing as I parked the car behind the tanks, then started to walk down the road, heading into Paris. The sheer blatancy of my actions gave them a sheen of legitimacy that no amount of sneaking through the barricade would have offered. A single sniper could have shot me down, but he would have to question my presence first. I was tempted to push my luck and issue additional orders ...

I pushed the thought aside as I walked into the suburbs of Paris. The streets were very quiet, quieter than any other city I’d ever visited; I couldn’t even hear the sound of gunfire in the distance. It was eerie, as if the entire city was dead. There were even few signs of actual fighting, I realised; most of the cars seemed intact and undamaged, nor were there any dead bodies scattered about. The doors, on the other hand, were firmly barricaded closed, while curtains had been drawn across the windows. I saw someone glancing at me from behind a blind and resisted the temptation to wave to her. It would probably have upset the poor girl.

The massive plumes of smoke I’d seen on my drive into the city were fading away, suggesting that someone had managed to organise the fire department into putting out the fires. God alone knew what had been burning in the first place, although I had some nasty suspicions. Jews were rare in France these days – the government had provided absolutely no protection to their community in the wake of the Final Israeli-Arab War – but there were two synagogues in that direction. And then there was no shortage of churches, even in secular Paris. Victor could have been directing the more radical of his followers to deal with the hated signs of religious freedom, giving him time to organise the sensible ones.

I heard the chanting as I turned the corner and saw a gang of street thugs advancing towards me. The only uniform they wore were the green armbands I’d noted on the army troops; only four of them actually carried automatic weapons. I had a feeling that Victor didn't trust them completely, unsurprisingly. They might have decided to turn on the French population before the army was completely broken. Poverty, rage and racism could push people into doing all kinds of vile acts. They caught sight of me and advanced, threateningly. I glared at their leader and began to explain.

“You can pass,” the leader said, finally. “We have orders to keep the infidels off the streets, unless under our control.”

They were doing more than that, I realised, as I walked further into the city. Cars were being pushed to one side, clearing the roads for military operations, while a number of houses were being evacuated, their occupants taken to other houses and told to share them with their owners. Any protests were rapidly squashed with violence. Victor seemed to be keeping his people busy, I decided, as well as making preparations for the next stage of his plan. I caught sight of a number of people dangling from lampposts and shuddered. None of them looked to be anything, but ethnic Frenchmen. Two of the women had clearly been raped before they'd been killed.

That’s what they will do everywhere, once they take power, I thought, and shuddered. It never seemed to change; the extremists take power, then lead the population in a revolt that – more often than not – resulted in nothing more than mass slaughter. But the extremists always got away with it. And when they won, the slaughter they meted out to their enemies – which included many who disagreed with them on only minor details – was horrifying.

I stepped to one side as a long line of prisoners, their hands on their heads, were marched towards one of the makeshift detention camps. They all looked to be government workers, I guessed; Victor had probably made up a checklist of people who should be arrested and then held long before the insurgency had actually begun. It was standard Russian practice; they’d done it in a dozen different countries. A handful looked to have been molested, but overall they seemed to have avoided rape. It was quite likely that Victor’s employers expected the bureaucrats to run the government for them, once the new government was secure. I had no doubt that they would switch sides. Bureaucrats were loyal to nothing, but their paycheck – and their lives. I caught sight of a middle-aged woman, weeping silently as she was pushed along, and knew that she would have children. It wouldn't take long for threats to their lives to break her.

France had certainly tried to keep good records on its population. The records would fall into Victor’s hands, along with the people he would need to interpret them. He’d use the files to round up retired military officers, policemen and anyone else who might become the core of a resistance, along with their families. Once they were rounded up ... well, somehow I doubted they’d be allowed to leave the country. It was much more likely that they’d be put in front of a firing squad and simply eliminated. Their children would be given to Muslim families to raise ... no, Victor wouldn’t be that merciful. Standard KGB practice was to wipe out entire families and the FSB hadn't changed that much.

Victor’s small number of trained troops grew thicker on the ground as I walked up the Avenue Foch. It had once been beautiful, but now it looked like an armed camp, as well as a war zone. Bullet marks were everywhere, marring the buildings, while men wearing shackles carried bodies away for disposal. There were a handful of military vehicles scattered about, including several mobile antiaircraft launchers, just in case the remains of the French Air Force started to bomb Paris. Several of the soldiers were also carrying MANPADS.

Unsurprisingly, I didn't get much further without being challenged. Two soldiers, both clearly made of tougher stuff than the first officer I’d conned, demanded to see my papers. I gave them the papers we’d taken off the real Barras and explained that I was looking for the Commander of the Faithful. They studied them carefully, frisked me expertly, and then marched me up towards the French Presidential Palace. Like the rest of the core of Paris, it had been overrun in a savage attack. God alone knew what had happened to the President, I told myself, as I saw more dead bodies hanging from trees. I recognised one of them as a known member of the National Front – one of the loudest proponents for cutting back on immigration, lambasted in the media as a racist bigot – but the others were unfamiliar.

I was surprised that Victor had actually set up shop in the Palais de l'Élysée. He, of all people, should have known that it would be a target for any resistance, although the French might hesitate to fire on one of their national landmarks. On the other hand, there was a definite symbolic value in taking over the building; it had been the home of the French President before the insurgency had killed him. If they had killed him. I had a feeling that Victor would have preferred to have the President making his submission on live television, just to discourage further resistance.

The guards inside the palace were very well trained. They searched me again, removed my pistol and papers, then pushed me through a set of heavily guarded doors that led to a flight of stairs. Like the White House, the French President’s palace had a series of bunkers and tunnels underneath, including one that he could use to escape in an emergency. I wondered if his bodyguards had been able to get him out before it was too late, although if they had it did raise the question of why he hadn't contacted Éclair. Perhaps he thought that the battle was lost and all he could do was flee to the coast and get a boat to carry him to Britain. Once he was outside the city, he should be safe enough unless he got very unlucky.

I felt colder as I walked down the stairs, feeling the layers of concrete pressing down on me. The French hadn't wasted their money; the bunker was deep enough to protect it from a missile strike, perhaps even a penetrator warhead. But unless I missed my guess, a cruise missile would still trap them under the ground. Victor was being stupid and that puzzled me. Very little of what he’d done had been stupid ...

There was another set of guards at the bottom of the stairs, who took custody of me. They escorted me into a large map room, almost identical to the one I’d seen at Langley, back when I’d been given a taste of operational control duties. I hadn't liked it. Here, however, there was a handful of people trying to coordinate a coup. It clearly wasn't easy. In order to prevent the French from organising quickly enough to nip his scheme in the bud, Victor had taken down most of their command network. Getting it back up again was a challenge.

I paused as I entered the room, looking for familiar faces. The man who seemed to be in charge was Pakistani, I thought; none of the subtle hints that his skin tone came out of a bottle seemed to be present. Besides, his beard looked remarkably natural. Most of the others were Arab, apart from a couple of nervous-looking Frenchmen. Useful idiots, I guessed, who hadn't really understood the true nature of their allies. They'd be for the chop once the new government was firmly in power.

“You were supposed to sabotage the military base,” the Pakistani said. His Arabic held a strong Islamabad accent, enough to convince me that he wasn't Victor. I couldn't have put it into words, but there was something rough-hewn about him that Victor lacked. “What happened to you?”

The real danger had been meeting someone who knew Barras. I’d deduced from what Barras told us that he was rated firmly under ‘expendable,’ but there had been no way to know for sure. But I was sure that I was right. Barras hadn't been expected to survive his mission, any more than any of the other suicide attackers had been expected to escape. No one would have bothered to study him closely before he left. Or so I hoped.

“I was caught attempting to blow up the armoury,” I reported, and gave a brief outline of what had happened to the real Barras. “And then I managed to escape when they gave me an opportunity. I crept around the base, picked up some useful intelligence and then made a run for Paris.”

Lesage and I had worried endlessly over just what sort of intelligence I should give them. Too much might raise their suspicions; too little would remind them of just why they had sent Barras out to die in the first place. I could have given them inaccurate intelligence, but if they had spies or observers watching the loyalists, they would know that I was either lying or making it up. Both of the possibilities probably carried the death penalty.

Who was I kidding? Of course they carried the death penalty?

“That is surprising,” the Pakistani grunted. “And what do you have to tell us?”

I gathered myself. “The base I was sent to is going to be abandoned, unless they can get more troops up north,” I said. Most of the northern bases, certainly the ones near Paris, had been overrun by the insurgents, their troops either joining the insurgency or simply being executed. “However, there is a functioning command network and they’re working hard to move troops up to Paris.”

“A logical course of action,” one of the Arabs said. He appeared to be the second-in-command, although it was impossible to be sure. Some insurgent leaders worked hard to prevent their subordinates from forming power bases of their own, even though it was often counterproductive. “You tell us nothing we could not already deduce for ourselves.”

There was a long pause, leaving me wondering if I was about to die. If I’d been allowed to keep my pistol ... but they’d disarmed me. And all I had was the transponder, which was damn near useless so far underground. No transmitter I knew could punch a signal out through layers of solid concrete. My mission might be about to come to an inglorious end.

“However, we should reward the determination he has shown,” the Arab continued. “And besides, we need as many officers as we can get.”

I gave the Arab a second look. There was nothing particularly remarkable about him; he certainly didn't have the charisma of the Pakistani, who was in command of an insurgency largely composed of Arabs. He was tall and thin, with a neat little beard and short dark hair; he looked more like a student than an insurgent. And yet he seemed to have authority ...

Victor, I realised. It should have been obvious from the start, but the Pakistani had distracted me, just as he’d been meant to do. If there happened to be a sniper team running around Paris – and French SF troops weren't that far behind American SF, who had managed to hide in places that no one would have thought to look – the Pakistani, not Victor, would be their first target. I wondered if he knew that was his role in the insurgency?

It didn't seem that way, I decided, as he returned to the map. “We can move two units of mobile troops towards the base,” he said, nodding towards me. “If we can catch them before they scatter ...”

“Our forces would be exposed,” Victor said, calmly. It was a suggestion, but I had no doubt that it was really an order. “They still control what remains of the air force.”

He tapped the map. “We can move recon elements up instead, just to see if they’re still there,” he added. “If so, we can deal with them tomorrow.”

I couldn't fault his logic. Armoured units sans air cover were going to be slaughtered, not least because Victor didn't seem to know about the Marquis and their gunships. And Éclair had managed to recover a number of attack helicopters – and it was possible that he would be able to borrow more from Britain. And it was just possible that Washington would agree to provide direct military support. KEW strikes would cripple the insurgency and no American lives would be risked.

Victor looked up at me. “Take him to the barracks, where he can rest,” he ordered. “I’ll call him when I need him.”

I bowed my head, then they escorted me out of the bunker and back up the stairs. Outside, they gave me back my pistol, but kept the radio. I honestly wasn’t too surprised. A single moment of radio chatter could draw hunting aircraft down on their heads.

“We took over several hotels to serve as barracks,” the guard explained. He sounded friendlier, now that I had been cleared by the insurgent commanders. “You can sleep there” – he winked at me – “or even order companionship, if you know what I mean.”

I nodded, although I was barely following him. The next step was not going to be easy.

 

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The hotels around the centre of Paris were among the best in the world. The great and the good – or at least the well-connected and extremely wealthy – had stayed in the hotels, while attempting to convince the French Government to do something they wanted the government to do. Now, however, everyone who had been staying in the hotels had been rounded up and transported to one of the detention camps, while the staff had been told to serve the insurgency’s leadership. It wasn't quite what they’d signed up to do.

I was mildly surprised that the hotels hadn't been destroyed – one of them had been burned down, although that might have been an accident – but corruption was an integral part of any revolution. Those who rebelled against luxury often developed a taste for it themselves, to the point where they became like those they had overthrown. The Mullahs of Iran had certainly embraced the luxury of the Shah, particularly after their first leader had gone to discover that there were no virgins in hell, So had the senior officers of the Communist Party in Russia. In the end, they’d become just like those they’d overthrown.

My escort had a brief word with one of the staff, who took over and led me up the stairs. The hotel had an internal generator of its own, I realised as we walked; the interior of the building still had power, despite most of the city’s power grid being down. I supposed that made sense; the wealthy and powerful who used the hotel wouldn't like being plunged into darkness because part of the overstressed power network had collapsed. Blackouts were a part of living in a European city these days, even without the insurgency. Right now, of course, they had bigger things to worry about.

“This is one of our smaller rooms,” the manager explained, apologetically. He’d probably been expecting to be put up against the wall and shot, only to be told that he was going to run the hotel for the new regime. “Do you want a meal sent up to you?”

I rolled my eyes when I saw the room. It was larger than my apartment in Mannington, decorated in a style that wouldn't have been out of place in the White House. One large window allowed the occupant to look out over Paris, although the curtains had been drawn to make it harder for snipers to tell that the room was occupied. A large coffee pot sat on one table, while a fridge underneath held expensive wine and fruit juice. They probably should have hid the wine, I decided. I had no doubt that one of the insurgency’s first priorities would be breaking all of the wine bottles in Paris. Couldn't have their less disciplined fighters getting drunk, could they?

“Yes, please,” I said. I hesitated, then took a risk. “Do you have a cell phone?”

“I’ll have one sent up to you,” the manager said.

He bowed and stepped out of the door, leaving me alone. I rolled my eyes again and walked over to the window, pulling the curtain back just enough to allow me to see Paris. There were new plumes of smoke billowing up in the distance, but I couldn't tell what was burning, or even if the fires were deliberate. Down below, small formations of insurgent soldiers were patrolling the streets, trying to ensure that the citizens remained under control. I shuddered at the thought of all the abuses they would commit in the following weeks, breaking the civilians to the yoke, then closed the curtain. There was nothing I could do about it, right now.

There was a tap on the door, which opened to reveal a maid dressed as a ... French Maid. I somehow managed to avoid gawking as she put a tray of bread, ham and cheese down on the table, then passed me a French-designed mobile phone. The ham was probably an attempt at passive resistance, although they’d clearly not quite gotten the hang of it yet. If I’d been one of the insurgent leaders, I would probably have had the girl raped and murdered for trying to feed me ham.

“Thank you,” I said, in halting French.

The maid nodded, bowed again – exposing an impressive bust – and departed in haste. I grinned, carefully picked the ham off the bread and put it in the fridge, then took a bite of the French loaf. Ham might be pork, and therefore forbidden under normal circumstances, but it was permitted to eat it if there was no other choice. Not that it really mattered, I told myself; I didn't intend to be in Paris long enough to have to eat pork. Or snails. Quite how the French managed to eat them was beyond me.

Shaking my head, I picked up the phone and – for once – blessed the European Union’s bureaucrats. They’d insisted that each mobile phone produced in Europe be capable of connecting to the emergency network, even if there was no SIM card inserted into the phone. Hell, they’d also – in an anti-monopoly measure – ordained that phones had to be capable of using more than one SIM card at a time. The important detail, at least as far as I was concerned, was that I could use the emergency network to place a call. Muttering a silent prayer under my breath, I dialled the number I’d memorised and waited.

There was a long pause before someone answered, just long enough for me to start worrying that Éclair’s loyalists had lost control of the emergency cell phone network. The system had been based outside Paris, but Victor could have detailed forces to seize it or simply uploaded viruses into the computer systems. I walked into the bathroom as soon as the answer came, turned on the shower to confuse any bugs in the room, and identified myself.

“Thank God,” Lesage said, when they put him on. “I thought we might have lost you.”

“No such luck,” I said, grimly. “Listen carefully.”

One thing the CIA had taught all of its recruits was how to make a concise report. I outlined everything I’d seen, from the moment I’d been confronted outside the city till I’d reported in to the insurgency commander. Victor and his nominal superior were based in the government’s bunker, I explained, consolidating their control over the cities. Once they had secured them, they intended to advance outwards and defeat the rest of the army.

“We’ve been offered safe conduct if we want to leave to Britain,” Lesage said, once I’d finished. “How strongly is Paris held?”

“Too strongly,” I said, and detailed everything I’d seen. The insurgents couldn't have held the city forever – for one thing, I doubted they’d managed to stockpile more than a few days worth of supplies in their safe houses – but they could certainly give the remaining French military a bloody nose. I wondered if the 5th cavalry could be dispatched from the United States, before deciding that Washington was unlikely to permit it. “On the other hand, I think it’s clear that the various different groups here are only held together by the commanders.”

There was a long pause. “We cannot take out the bunker without demolishing half of Paris,” Lesage pointed out, tartly. I couldn't disagree with him. Even a penetrator warhead might have problems smashing the French bunker. They’d built it very well. “And if we were to attack with conventional weapons, they might just retreat through the emergency tunnel and escape.”

I considered it. “Where does the emergency tunnel come out?”

“One comes out at a disused airbase, outside the city,” Éclair’s voice said. I hadn't known that he’d been listening. “The other comes out at the Folies Bergère.”

I fought down the urge to snigger. The Folies Bergère was a music hall that was renowned for erotic dancing, dating all the way back to 1862. It seemed absurd that the French Government’s emergency escape tunnel would come out there, but it did make a certain kind of sense. No one would be surprised if they saw government ministers or foreign ministers going to a performance, allowing them to slip into the tunnels without attracting the media. And if they did have to leave in a hurry, they'd still pop out some distance from the palace ...

“You said you had some SF teams ready for action,” I said, a plan slowly taking shape in my head. “Can you drop them into Paris under cover of darkness – and a missile attack?”

“Risky,” Lesage pointed out. “They could just get into the bunker and sneer at us.”

I outlined the rest of the plan. “Move one of your units to occupy the airbase where the second tunnel comes out,” I said. “They will probably have it under observation, even if they’re not occupying it themselves. The two attacks will force them to withdraw from the bunker ...”

“Which will force them to come out at the Folies Bergère,” Lesage finished. “Do you actually think that it might work?”

I nodded, though I knew they couldn’t see me. “If we can force them to come out in the open, we can deal with them,” I said. I’d have to deal with them ... but with a little luck, I could get into position to intercept Victor and his friends. Even without it, we would be forcing them to react to us, rather than the other way round. “And if we can force them to lose control of their forces ...”

“Maybe we can jam their communications systems too,” Lesage said. One advantage of microburst transmissions is that they’re very difficult to jam – allowing us to take down Victor’s network without risking our own. But Victor would probably have a contingency plan in place to deal with it. He had to know that it was a possibility. “And then see if they can respond to us.”

“Yep,” I said. “And see if you can convince Washington to help. The larger the missile attack, the better.”

“We’ll see to it,” Éclair assured me. “You just concentrate on gathering intelligence.”

I smiled as the connection broke, leaving me – again – isolated in the middle of a very hostile city. Idly, I paced over to the expensive plasma television mounted on one wall and switched it on, flicking through the channels. The French and most of the other European stations were down, or broadcasting a bland message to the civilians, informing them that there was a combined military and civil emergency in progress and ordering them to stay in their homes until further notice. I wondered how many of them would follow the orders now that they could hear gunfire on the streets, particularly the ones in smaller towns and villages that hadn't seen much fighting. But then, they weren't particularly important.

The BBC seemed to have undergone a massive shift in attitude overnight. I smiled as the announcer, a young man with a permanently serious expression, outlined the treachery of a number of Islamic elements and reminded the population that the country was now under martial law. A set of images from a place called Bradford followed, showing the British public exactly what the rioters had done to innocent civilians. I decided that someone had decided to crack down hard and was ensuring that the majority of the population would support harsh measures, at least until they were completed. Afterwards, people would probably claim that the government had overreacted, but then it would be too late.

WebTV discussed the situation in France, but didn't actually seem to know very much. The insurgents had broadcast a claim that they were now the legitimate government of France, yet the absence of the French President or anyone else who could appoint a new government made it harder for them to convince the world to back off. There were countless images, uploaded to the net through cell phones, but no overarching narrative. I wondered why Éclair hadn't tried to convince the world that he was the legitimate government of France, fighting to put down a rebellion, before realising that it would be pointless. The rest of the European Union was fighting its own battles; no one else, with the possible exception of the United States, would be able to assist. And there was a set of talking heads that stated that the French had gotten into the mess on their own and they could get out on their own.

I rolled my eyes as the commenter moved on to Germany. The situation there was even more confused, degenerating into a savage multi-sided blood swarm. WebTV seemed to be having problems understanding what was going on; according to them, the Arab population had largely sided with the insurgents, while the Turkish population was either siding with the government or fighting the Arabs on their own behalf. It shouldn't have been a surprise, I decided, although God alone knew how it would play out. The Turks might have been Muslims, but they also disliked the Arabs. There were historical reasons for that, but the way the various civil wars in the Middle East had spread into Turkey probably helped concentrate their minds. Of course, the more suspicious talking heads were wondering if Turkey was actually aiding the uprising. Turkey might just benefit if the EU needed to call on them for military aid.

The remaining channels were even more hysterical. One particularly alarming channel from America called for all Muslims to be deported at once, back to countries they had never actually come from, or for them to be herded into camps. It was an impulse that had nearly overwhelmed the country after San Francisco and I wondered if it would finally be allowed to shape our future. And if it did, what would become of me?

I shut off the television, finished the bread and cheese, then walked out of the room and up the stairs to the roof. The hotel was one of the tallest buildings in Paris; I wasn't surprised, when I walked outside, to see a pair of insurgents on the roof, carrying MANPADs and sniper rifles. They might just be able to provide covering fire if – when – the shit hit the fan. Luckily, they didn't seem inclined to ask questions, assuming that I’d already been cleared by someone else. I couldn't really have blamed them. Even experienced western soldiers had made the same mistake. No doubt it explained why so many of the terrorist attacks on military bases had succeeded so well.

There were more pillars of smoke now, rising up from all over the city. One of them came from nearby, but it took me several moments to realise that the fire was destroying the nearby Catholic church. Given time, they'd destroy every religious building in the city. I wondered just how much of France’s heritage would be left standing, if the insurgents were defeated; for all I knew, they’d destroy every one of France’s famous monuments and museums.

I shook my head – I couldn't do anything about it – and then make careful mental notes of every enemy installation I could see. The roofs were crawling with men carrying weapons, ready to engage any threat; I doubted that even Victor could hope to control them properly. I’d seen exercises where a single force – the Marines – had problems coordinating their operations. And Victor had bound several different groups together. If he hadn't had so many enforcers on the streets, the whole insurgency would have fallen apart by now as the different groups started fighting.

Shaking my head, I walked back to my room, lay down behind the bed – just in case someone decided to spray bullets at the hotel – and got some sleep. The cell phone woke me several hours later, chirping out an alert. I glanced at my watch, realising that darkness was falling over Paris. Stumbling over to the window, I gazed over the darkened city and shivered when I saw the remaining fires. The sky seemed to be lit up by an eerie red glow.

The cell phone text message stated that there were seventy minutes until the attack began. I deleted it – just in case – and then took advantage of the timing to pray. I prayed for the lives, souls and faith of everyone caught up in Paris, even though I knew that all three would be badly damaged by the insurgency. And I prayed for a speedy end to the fighting.

Picking up my pistol, I checked it automatically and then walked down the stairs, out onto the streets. I smiled to myself as I caught sight of a man wearing a green jacket that marked him out as one of Victor’s officers and followed him into the shadows. He must have caught victory disease, because he didn't seem to be aware that anyone was following him. I came up behind him, snapped his neck and pulled the jacket off his body. No one would question me if I looked official. Or so I hoped.

I took a glance at my watch as I started to walk towards the Folies Bergère. Thirty minutes left ... I didn't dare run; I just kept going, nodding to the young armed men I saw on the way. The darkness might induce some of the civilians to run, I guessed, and Victor would want to keep them from escaping. Who knew – the confusion we were about to cause might just give some of those civilians a chance to escape. As long as they didn't head towards the centre of Paris, they should be relatively safe ...

Or maybe not. Who knew what the troops ringing the city would do?

I caught my breath as I reached the Folies Bergère and hid in the shadows. There were a handful of guards at the door, all carrying assault rifles; I guessed that they were there to stop someone taking matters into their own hands and burning a building they would regard as sinful. That would have been funny.

I glanced up as the first cruise missile came into view. The operation had begun.

 

Oh, and...FREE BOOKS - Christmas Freebies! « The Chrishanger

Chris

 

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Washington must have decided to help, I realised, as the cruise missile started to launch other missiles. The French don’t have missiles like that.

The Hammerfall cruise missile is – technically speaking – a cross between a cruise missile and a UAV. Unlike a normal cruise missile, it actually carries several dozen smaller missiles that can be targeted on anything from a single person to an entire building. One pass could devastate a terrorist camp; hell, the mothership missile could easily loop back for recovery, rather than slamming itself into a final target and vanishing into a fireball. With so many targets around the centre of Paris, the operators were rather spoiled for choice. I watched in awe as missiles slammed down and explosions shook the entire city.

Other missiles lanced over the city and came down in the distance. I saw one of them come down in a blinding flash of light, followed by a huge fireball rising up into the dark sky. It had come down in the communities, I guessed, probably targeting one of the communications nodes the CIA had picked out in the city. Smaller missiles would be going after cell phones, radio transmitters and everything else, trying to knock the enemy command network down altogether. I checked that my cell phone was safely off and settled back to watch the show.

The insurgents seemed shocked by the sudden violence that had practically transformed night into day. I could hear shooting as they fired their guns into the air, although I had absolutely no idea what they thought they could hit. Several missile crews unleashed Stingers, which flew into the air and vanished in the distance. I felt a moment of pity for whoever was underneath them when they came down, as I rather doubted they could hit the cruise missiles before it was too late. Indeed, merely by firing the missiles, the MANPAD teams had marked themselves for death. A second Hammerfall drone hit many of their firing positions, destroying all hope of an organised resistance before the troops hit the ground.

Giant fireballs were rising up all over the city. They’d gone after the troop concentrations outside, I realised, hammering them as hard as they could. The simplest countermeasure to aerial bombardment was to spread out, but their commanders would wonder if they were about to be attacked, which would require concentration ... logically, they’d know that there was little left in the north to mount a serious attack, but would they believe it? The insurgents had a widely exaggerated impression of what we – the United States – could do, to the point where they believed that even our Charlie Foxtrots were deliberate.

I heard the sound of panic in the streets as the firing grew louder, just as the third set of aircraft swept over the city. Lesage’s gunships were in the lead, their heavy machine guns chattering down at anyone foolish enough to fire on them, followed rapidly by the transports. Brilliant flares lit up the night as they sought to divert any antiaircraft missiles launched at them, but the cruise missiles had done a good job. Only a handful of missiles were launched and they were all easily lured away from the vulnerable planes. I muttered a quick prayer as the first paratroopers began to drop from the planes, seemingly too low to deploy their parachutes before they hit the ground. Even the SEALS would have thought twice before carrying out such a mission – not that they would have let the risk deter them. But then, Lesage had had his pick of the best French soldiers for years. Mercenaries didn't have to worry so much about politics when planning their operations.

The gunships swept back over the city to provide fire support as the paratroopers dropped to the ground. Anyone who showed themselves would be engaged at once, giving the paratroopers a chance to break into the Palace and rush towards the bunker. It was possible that they’d get inside, killing the leadership before they could escape, but I doubted it. The insurgents would have sealed the bunker the moment the first cruise missiles roared over the city. I took one last look at the new fires, blazing up in the distance, and then turned back towards the Folies Bergère. Unsurprisingly, the guards had run. I wondered if they would stop before they reached the edge of the city.

I took advantage of their departure to slip inside the building. There was no generator here, leaving it dark and cold. If I’d had NVGs, I would have been happy to go down to the basement, but instead I had to wait. The CIA had ways to enhance an agent’s eyes, to allow him to see in the dark like a cat; I would have requested them, if the enhancements hadn't been easily detectable. A single x-ray would have given me away. Finding a place to wait, I settled down and drew my gun. The ground was shaking as the gunships pounded other targets, forcing the enemy to keep running. It wouldn't be long now.

My ears are sharp, but I still almost missed the sound of someone moving down below. The building had apparently been emptied during the first uprising – I had a feeling that the dancers would have been lucky to have been allowed to flee – and the guards should have prevented anyone else from entering. It had to be the insurgent leaders ... I wondered if Victor would take advantage of the chaos to slip away, just before I heard a creaking sound as someone opened a door. I saw a chink of light in the darkness and clutched my weapon tightly.

Two armed men led the way, wearing French uniforms with green armbands. They were either nervous or simply not very well trained, because they didn't try to sweep the building before heading right for the doors. But then, they knew that the building had been guarded after everyone had been forced to leave. There was no logical reason to expect an ambush – and besides, they had to assume that Éclair knew about the tunnel. The paratroopers would be heading over to block the exit as soon as they secured the palace. And, without communications, they couldn't organise a counterattack.

I watched them go, then turned to peer down into the darkness as four other men emerged. They were carrying laptops; I guessed they had been using them to control the insurgency. If we could get our hands on them ... I pushed the thought aside as three other men appeared, all wearing Islamic robes rather than military uniform. They were also wearing green armbands. And one of them was the Pakistani ...

The other two were Arabs. I couldn’t tell if one of them was Victor, not in the semi-darkness, but who else could they be? Bringing up the rear were a pair of women, both wearing all-concealing veils. Their presence struck me as odd, but who knew what the insurgent leadership considered acceptable? The fifth or sixth person in the French line of succession to the presidency was a woman, and she was a known leftist without the slightest idea of what life was like for the ordinary Frenchman. She'd been a terrorist enabler for years; no doubt she would have leaned back and spread her legs for the insurgents, when they demanded her services.

I’d never have a better chance. I stepped forward and fired twice, shooting down both Arabs before targeting the Pakistani. We still didn't know who he was and I would have liked to interrogate him, but there was no time, even for a quick battlefield interrogation. I saw his eyes widen with shock before I put a bullet between his eyes and watched him fall to the ground, dead. His body hit the ground with a thump, just as the guards started to rush back into the building. They were silhouetted against the light from the burning buildings and I shot them both before they could do anything.

And then a stabbing pain cut into my arm.

I threw myself forward, swearing out loud. I’d been a stupid fucking idiot; an insurgent might have dismissed the women as useless, but I should have known better. And one of the women wasn’t a woman at all, I realised, as I rolled over, my left arm almost completely useless. Victor had been hidden under the veil, ensuring that he would remain undetected until it was far too late. I staggered as he kicked me in the chest, losing my grip on my own pistol. Did he recognise me, I wondered, or was he merely pissed at what I’d done?

“You,” he said, finally. He did recognise me. “You are remarkably persistent.”

I stared into his gun barrel and tried to stall. “What ...what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“What I was hired to do,” Victor said. He waved a hand, encompassing the fire and rage enveloping Paris. I could hear the sound of gunfire growing louder. “Don’t you think it is magnificent?”

He was gloating? But of course; by the very nature of things, most of Victor’s activities remained secret. His achievements from his FSB days would be locked in the files for hundreds of years, never told to the world, while anything he’d done after he’d left the FSB – if he had left the FSB – would never be known. Even if the insurgents defeated the French and took over the country, they would never honour Victor for his service. A knife in the back was a more likely outcome.

“I think you’ve killed thousands of people,” I said. I wracked my brain for a solution, for a way to escape, but nothing came to mind. My arm was bleeding; I needed medical attention and I wasn't going to get it. How long had it been since I’d been hurt like this? Too long, I realised; my endurance had been allowed to slip. Not that it was likely to matter. “Go on – tell me how it is all justified in the interests of making a better world.”

Victor shrugged. I saw a glint of cold blue light in his eyes, a reminder that whatever human feelings he'd once had, they’d largely been beaten out of him by the FSB. Even the worst CIA officer has some feelings, but the FSB had wanted sociopaths. They’d largely succeeded in creating them too. Maybe the paratroopers would get here in time ... no, Victor would shoot me and escape into the shadows. Paris wasn't exactly a small city and he could simply vanish in the chaos.

“I have no interest in explaining anything to you,” he said, dispassionately. “I ...”

The ground shook violently as something exploded, not too far away. For a moment, Victor was distracted and I threw myself at him, knocking the gun aside. It went off, firing a bullet into the darkened shadows, before we crashed to the ground, struggling frantically. I kept hitting him as hard as I could with my right arm, trying to get my hand around his throat so I could squeeze. Even with both hands, Victor had been trained in a tougher school than I had and he would have been forced to demonstrate his skill time and time again. Arabs disliked being forced to learn anything, certainly not from snotty Western instructors; God knew that so many of the ones we’d tried to teach had learned nothing from the experience. I suppose we should have been grateful. They’d largely ended up fighting us.

Victor grunted something in Russian and slammed a fist into my left arm. I grunted in pain, feeling something dislodge itself, then hit him in the chest, bringing up my knee to strike him in the groin. He was wearing a cup, naturally, and my knee failed to do more than make him swear out loud. A moment later, he slapped my face and threw me off, sending me spinning across the floor. I gasped in pain before feeling the metal of the gun poking into my back, forcing me to roll over it so I could pick it up. Victor hadn't seen; he was heading towards the exit, rather than continuing the fight.

The gun was a Russian design, I realised; crude and functional, without any real elegance. But who really had time for elegance in a pistol anyway? I hefted it, took aim as best as I could, and shot him in the back. He was wearing body armour he’d probably stolen from the French military, but the force of the impact knocked him to the ground. I picked myself up somehow and staggered towards him, feeling cold hatred washing though my heart. This was the man who had plunged Europe into a nightmare. This was the man who had mocked my religion even as he sought to use it for his own aims. This was the man who might have unleashed a pogrom that would exterminate Islam, purging it completely from the Earth. He had no right to live.

Victor saw me pointing the gun at him and smirked. I could tell what he was thinking; even if he died, the insurgency wouldn't come to an end. There were too many armed men out there, too many people who believed that they were fighting in a holy cause ... and too many people who believed that there was no going back. They were probably right; once Éclair reclaimed control of France, there was likely to be a mass slaughter. Perhaps I could convince him to return every Arab to Algeria ... no, that wasn't likely to happen. The logistics alone would make it impractical.

And without leadership, the insurgency would merely do more damage to France before it was crushed.

I heard people running past the building, fleeing further into the city. The paratroopers must have flushed them out of the hotels, I realised; I hoped that the hotel staff were among the ones who managed to make it out alive. It wouldn't be long before they came here – hell, for all I knew, the building was already under observation. I’d have to be very careful when I exited.

Victor’s voice was almost a whisper. “Whatever happens, American,” he said, “we win.”

A Batman Gambit, I realised. They just couldn't lose. If the insurgency was crushed, the financiers who provided support to the terrorists in Central Asia were crushed as well. If the insurgency took power, Europe would be grateful when the Russian tanks rolled in to re-establish order. Hell, maybe the Russians thought they could improve their demographics by inviting in refugees from Eastern Europe. Their government’s attempts to boost the population hadn't been working very well.

And they’d crippled Europe as a potential threat for years, if not decades.

“Congratulations,” I said.

I saw the twitch and pulled the trigger. At such a range, I simply couldn't miss. Victor’s head jerked backwards as the bullet tore through his temple, spilling blood and guts over the floor. I fired again and again, making damn sure that he was dead, until the gun started to click uselessly. I dropped it on the ground, recovered my original weapon, and then looked down at Victor’s corpse. It struck me, not for the first time, just how normal he looked. Like me, he knew how best to camouflage himself to pass unnoticed.

There was a whimper from behind me and I spun around, weapon raised. The other veiled woman – if it really was a woman – was cowering on the floor, staring at me. I stepped forward, keeping the gun firmly pointed at her head, and ripped the veil away, to reveal a dark-haired girl staring up at me. She looked familiar, but it took me several seconds to recognise her as the enabler I’d wondered about earlier.

“Bitch,” I snarled.

I hated people like her; in many ways, they were worse than the extremists who turned decent Muslims into murderers. She and her kind put the rights of the community over the rights of the individual; they were simply too stupid to realise that if the extremists took power, they would be lucky if they were merely sent back to being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. The impulse to kill her rose up within me, to snap her neck or to simply put a bullet through her head. I could have killed her easily.

And Victor was dead. My mission was completed. I could go home and leave the French to fight and win on their own. And I could kill her as a gift first ...

“Fuck it,” I said, out loud. I rolled her over roughly, bound her hands behind her and then hauled the stupid woman to her feet. She squeaked as I searched her roughly, but she was unarmed. Perhaps she’d shared the liberal conviction that guns in private hands were dangerous. Sometimes they were – but the insurgency might not have succeeded so well if the French population had been armed.

I shook my head. “Come on, bitch. We're going to find the soldiers.”

No doubt Éclair would put her on trial, perhaps for high treason; stupidity wasn't exactly a crime. Ignorance wasn't either, but wilful ignorance really should have been. I hate idealists and intellectuals. They get so obsessed with how they think the world should be that they don’t realise that the world isn't like they think it to be.

Outside, Paris was a war zone. The sound of shooting was growing louder, while the sky was brightly lit by the fires. Gunships kept sweeping over the city, ready to unleash hell on any insurgents below. I clicked the cell phone on and called in; two minutes later, I was hailed by a squad of armed Marquis. They took the woman into custody – I didn't give much for her chances; France would need someone to blame for the crisis – and offered me an escort out of Paris. After some thought, I declined. I needed some time to think.

Besides, after everything else I’d done, walking out of a war zone should be easy.

 

Chapter Thirty

“They're calling this place Little Britain,” Li’s voice said, from behind me. “All those expatriates who came here in hopes of finding a better life.”

I smiled. The Bahamas had been ruled by Britain for centuries and, after independence, the British had kept a strong interest in their former colony. Now, with hundreds of thousands of people leaving Britain each year, the Bahamas had actively sought immigrants who might bring new skills to the network of islands that made up the nation. And, for that matter, rich immigrants who might invest in the country. The banks rarely asked questions as long as the prospective customer had property somewhere within the commonwealth.

“Good a place as any to meet,” I said. I’d wanted a chance to sit down and relax after the nightmare of Paris. It was funny how killing Victor had brought no real satisfaction. “I wasn't sure you’d make it.”

Li sat down beside me and I took a glance at her. She was wearing a skimpy bikini that left absolutely nothing to the imagination, drawing attention from males and females all over the private beach. Some of the local girls were eying her as if she were competition for the wealthy foreigners, even though I’d brushed them all off over the last couple of weeks. I caught myself staring at the triangles that covered her nipples and looked away, embarrassed.

“Washington wanted to clarify a few points,” Li said. A bartender came over and offered her a drinks menu; she ordered a ginger ale and then looked back at me. “You do realise that you caused no end of trouble?”

“I thought that was Victor,” I said, innocently.

The nuke in Algeria had been bad enough, but having to bargain with Éclair – now President Éclair of the Sixth French Republic – over the Butcher of San Francisco had been very embarrassing for the White House. It didn't help that a number of roving reporters had embedded themselves with the French military and filed dozens of stories on how European soldiers were valiantly fighting against the bastards who would destroy civilisation. Eventually, Washington had had no choice, but to offer direct assistance. It was lucky that all the French really wanted were weapons, supplies and a handful of KEW strikes. The rest of the fighting they intended to do themselves.

“Washington wasn't too happy,” Li said. “You of all people ought to know just how risky it can be to try to push Washington in any direction.”

I scowled at her. “Might I remind you,” I said tightly, “that if you had raided the camp on my suggestion, you would have captured the Butcher without having to bargain with the French?”

“My boss has been pointing it out, time and time again,” Li said. “But with Algeria collapsing into chaos and several nukes unaccounted for, we don’t know where everything is going to end up.”

“Right now,” I said, “we have a shortage of allies. If we back Europe now, we may well end up with more allies.”

“Assuming Europe survives,” Li countered. “That's still up in the air.”

I nodded. France had been effectively split in two, with loyalists controlling the north and insurgents controlling the south. Given time – and American air support – I was fairly sure that the French would succeed in pushing the insurgents into the sea, but it might be years before they managed to build up the force necessary to succeed. It didn't help that Belgium and the Netherlands had declared themselves as Islamic states, with vast numbers of refugees fleeing to Britain or France. The French might have to deal with the threat behind them before advancing against their own southern territories.

Italy seemed to be staggering; the CIA’s best estimate was that Italy would fall, assuming that someone managed to reunite the different insurgent factions. Germany seemed to have managed to survive – a new government had taken power – but it would still have to deal with the insurgent-held cities and sort out who had been loyal and who had been treacherous. Turkey had been making angry noises about the future of German Turks, which wouldn't make the situation any better. The Germans weren't likely to allow anyone to dictate to them after the insurgency had torn through their cities.

And Spain was still trapped in civil war.

“I think that we have to help,” I said. “If we don’t, they will remember that – and so will our enemies.”

The thought was galling, but it had to be faced. We'd suffered humiliation after humiliation because we hadn't been willing to stand up and make it clear that we were prepared to fight. Osama Bin Laden had even kicked off the terror war by assuming that we wouldn't do anything more than fire a few cruise missiles at Afghanistan. And our allies, fearful of being betrayed, had been reluctant to cooperate with us. Why should they when so many of our plans depended on someone else being willing to commit suicide on our behalf?

But now we had a new President, and a destroyed city. We’d learned a hard lesson.

“So I have told my boss,” Li said. She leaned back as the bartender returned with her drink, taking a sip. “Do we really know what Victor was doing?”

I shrugged. “The Butcher believed that Victor was a Muslim soldier fighting for the cause,” I said. “I don't think they were paying him very much, if anything. It's quite possible that they never realised that he was actually Russian.”

“So he might have been working for Moscow all along,” Li said. “After all, all you mercenaries want to be paid in advance.”

“True,” I agreed. The thought that I might have any kinship with Victor was not very pleasing. On the other hand, Li was right; if Victor had been a mercenary, he would have wanted to be paid. Just how rich was he? The CIA had been unable to identify his bank accounts. “Or maybe he intended to take whatever he wanted from France. They’d capture plenty of weaponry they could sell on the black market.”

“Another cheerful thought,” Li said. She took a sip of her drink. “In any case, everyone is very relieved that you killed him, if you actually did kill him.”

I stared at her. “I put several slugs though his head,” I objected. “He’s as dead as” – my imagination failed me – “a man who has had several bullets put though his head.”

Li’s lips twitched. “People have survived awful injuries in the past,” she said, dryly. She shook her head. “There’s a school of thought that wonders if you shot Victor, or someone else – a double.”

“Right,” I said, sharply. “Is this an attempt to refuse to pay?”

“No,” Li said. “Langley is convinced that you shot the right person. There are just some Russia-watchers who are reminding us that we have no DNA sample to prove it. You are going to be paid.”

She smiled. “Besides, isn't the payment in escrow?”

“I can't sue the Company,” I said, dryly. Well, I could – at the cost of ensuring that I never received any more contracts, from anyone. “But I’m glad to hear that you won’t be making trouble over it.”

Li nodded. “There will be other operations for you, I'm sure,” she said. “Right now, however, I brought someone with me. She wanted to meet you again.”

“Fazia,” I said. “Why ...?”

“She seems to have taken a shine to you,” Li said. “Perhaps it’s because I told her all kinds of stories about you, or perhaps it’s because you saved her life. She actually started talking about joining the Foreign Legion before I suggested that Langley might be interested in her.”

I had to smile. The American Foreign Legion had been set up to make use of prospective immigrants who didn't have much else to offer the country. It had been based on the French Foreign Legion, with citizenship offered to the men who served five years in the legion – and automatically granted to their families, if they survived. The legion took women too, but someone like Fazia would be wasted on them. In a sense, she was an invisible too.

“Vetting her background is impossible, of course,” Li conceded. “MI5 could do some checking for us, but chances are that she does have insurgents in the family. But she did leave her family to strike out on her own ... would you consider mentoring her?”

“I thought you were on my side,” I said, wryly. Mentors and their students are not supposed to develop a relationship, no matter how much they wanted one. If Fazia genuinely had a crush on me, I shouldn't be her mentor. “That’s a conflict of interest.”

Li sighed. “Events in Europe are going to make life even harder for the Muslims here,” she said. “I think that she is going to need proper handling and that probably means you.”

“If Langley will take me back,” I said. “I rather liked my independence.”

“Oh, you know how blurred the line can become,” Li said. She shrugged as she stood up. “I’ve taken the liberty of booking you both into the Hotel Magnificent for dinner, in a private room. The locals swear blind it isn't bugged, but check it anyway. And I hope you have a good evening.”

“Thank you,” I said, doubtfully. Li worked for Langley. No doubt she thought that encouraging Fazia and me to work together would benefit the Company. And it probably would, given the right sort of planning. But I really didn't like being manipulated. “I’m sure we shall.”

Two hours later, I stood in front of the Hotel Magnificent and rolled my eyes at the building. The designer seemed to have taken an idea of an English country house and warped it out of all recognition, creating a building that seemed to look like a mutated cross between the White House and Buckingham Palace. I opened the door and walked into the lobby, showing the paper Li had given me to the bellhop. He nodded and escorted me down a long corridor, decorated with portraits of the Kings and Queens of England – and a smaller set that were of the Governor-Generals of the Bahamas – into a private room. I almost rolled my eyes again as I saw the decorations. Someone had wasted a great deal of money on expensive trash.

I didn't, because Fazia was sitting at the single candlelit table. She'd taken some care with her appearance, I realised, because she looked stunning. Not that she’d been ugly before, I considered, but I hadn't met her at her best. Her dark hair spilled over a white dress that hinted at her curves, rather than revealing them outright. I took a single moment to admire her and then kept my eyes firmly on her face.

“Thank you for coming,” she said, shyly. “I wasn't sure you’d come.”

I smiled. “How could I refuse?”

“Easily,” Fazia said. She shook her head. “Li said I should talk to you about joining the CIA.”

“It can be a pain sometimes,” I said. Being independent worked so much better, apart from the fact that the people who hired me considered me expendable. “Why do you want to join?”

“I thought I could just leave,” Fazia admitted. “But the problem just followed me.”

I winced as I saw her expression. No woman took rape – even an attempted rape – lightly. And if she’d stayed in the community, she might have been safe – at the cost of giving up her independence completely. She would have married the man her parents chose for her, born him children, even surrendered her career to please him. Instead, she’d tried to leave – and Patel’s goons couldn't let her go so easily.

“It has to be stopped,” she added. “If I can help, I will.”

“The training will not be easy,” I warned her. “It was bad for me – and it can be worse for a woman. And the missions have been known to go disastrously wrong.”

“I know,” Fazia said, “but I have to try.”

I nodded. In many ways, I understood the impulse. Hell, I shared it. Maybe I couldn't wipe out the extremists who were ripping Islam apart, but that wasn't an excuse for not trying.

“You know,” Fazia said, as we ordered our meal, “you are a very strange Muslim.”

“I am a very typical Muslim,” I countered. “It’s everyone else who’s misled.”

The End​

 

Hah - managed to post it all!

Comments?

Chris

 

Yep! Coming up.

Chris