Friday, August 20, 2010

The Big Blue Sky: Fifty-four

CHAPTER THREE

“Once Iran gets the bomb, they’re gonna use it…”
From the Michael Savage Program, August 19, 2010


Events were moving more quickly now, gaining their own momentum, like a stone tumbling towards a cliff’s edge. The dangers of fate and history are many, those sometimes still waters in which mankind could wallow in his arrogance and drown in ignorance. In that arrogance man could pretend he was the captain of his fate, but true fate has countless captains, each vying and scratching for their own prominence and significance. In the end, the specter of war is the destroyer of the illusion those captains pretend from their selfish fate.

Indeed, war is a storm, conjured by incompetence and foolishness. Those burning winds are whipped, and fat with the embers of cultures and communities betrayed by the propaganda of their leaders. And the Press, sometimes the tool, sometimes the victim fans the flames of that growing storm. Networks competed viciously and newspapers lost readers to the laziness of the internet, a laziness disguised as democracy. From the crumbling ruins of the so-called “old” media, rose the “new” media of the Twenty-first Century, interested more in personality and advocacy for corporations or political parties. It was a realm in which facts were less important than hyperbole and the lawyerly character of an argument.

As the world edged closer to war, in Congress and Senate, and on talk radio the direction and tone of the discourse changed notably. Newscasts, blogs and articles filtered in replacement words. Overnight Iran became “the enemy,” just as they had in the days before NATO’s actions to stop the butchery of the Serbs. To the average citizen, perhaps not taking enough interest, the words seemed to appear over night, like some team sport. There was talk of targets and tactics, and analysis of the military capabilities on both sides. Old animosities were recounted so often that almost anyone on the street could rattle off a litany of Iran’s transgressions; real, exaggerated and fabricated. Selling war is surprisingly easy because it engages the natural aloneness each soul struggles with and comes to individually.

It was no different in Tehran, perhaps more so, as small nations always feel their lot more tenuous, especially in the looming shadow of a larger nation. Preparations for war began apace, amid a continual deluge of images of allied bombings in Afghanistan and Iraq at the start of those conflicts. Mixed with images of mutilated civilian casualties, it was impossible to retain any reasoned perspective to events. Demonstrators filled the streets in cities throughout the Muslim world, with particular hysterics in Tehran and Shiraz and Mashhad. Regular alerts, and forced conscriptions to construct token defenses (anti-tank trenches were pointless in the face of cruise missiles and smart bombs) fed the strangling siege mentality gripping Iran. People taped windows, moved valuables to weekend houses in the mountains and stocked up on food and water. Everywhere there were fears and accusations of spies.

Countries do not find themselves at war. There isn’t peace one day and violence the next. Nations evolve into war, as much from within as without. It grows to become the norm, supplanting the everyday until peace, such as it was feels like naïve innocence, like a rape victim might look back upon her childhood with certain bitterness, as if she might have foretold her fate somehow. That evolution is lost to the final spark that sets that kindling alight into a great conflagration. The reasons for war become that moment, without any regard to all that came before.

The deaths in Iran became that catalyst. It preceded a string of events, more a character of fear and growing tension that seemed to underscore to the world that Iran had in fact declared war upon the West. In Raunheim Germany a young Persian student drove through a crowded café, killing six. In Skokie Illinois, a Muslim man shot dead a Jewish shop keeper, while two middle eastern men were arrested in New Jersey over an alleged plot to bomb a shopping mall. They were all signs to the West of Islam’s malicious intentions. Many Iranians could well understand the frustration that could cause some to snap and lose their minds.

Tensions in the Gulf caused oil prices to skyrocket worldwide. Markets tumbled, imperiling fortunes of those who could directly influence government and media. Airlines stocks collapsed, bludgeoned by spiking fuel costs, while the stocks defense firms blossomed overnight. War, and all that came with it, became the intention of the world, and was evolving to a point in which no one would be able to prevent it from happening.

The Big Blue Sky: Fifty-three

Molly slipped in and out of consciousness as Doug headed south through the forest, racing to put as much distance between them and the lakeshore as possible. The truck had taken a pretty fair beating. The grill had held, mostly, and the bumper was bent up and back, enough that he’d needed to bend it back with a tire iron to turn the wheel. One of the headlights had shattered. Only one remained, the light feeble in the forest. Wind shrieked through the bullet holes in the windshield, eclipsing some NPR program on the radio.

Molly was against him, her face against his chest. He had an arm around her shoulders, holding her close against the banging and bouncing of the uneven ground of the dirt logging road. The cut in her cheek had stopped bleeding some time ago. Her breathing was steady and even, almost as if she was asleep. He felt confident she hadn’t been badly hurt.

Doug took hope in having her there, like he was no longer in this fight alone. The comrades of the men he had killed would come looking for him. He had no doubt about that, but for now time and distance were his greatest adversaries. Molly moaned and stirred beneath his arm.

He thought about that night beside the Bosporus, and how he was so tempted to taste her lips, knowing full well he would not have been able to stop there. It would have been nothing to go up to her room, but he could never be unfaithful to Jane, and simply the temptation ravaged his conscience and soul to the day he sat holding Jane’s hand as she took her final breaths. He was tearing himself apart for even considering infidelity for a moment. It drove a halting and painful moan when her hand tightened briefly in his and then went limp. And now she was here beside him, her nearness only calling to mind all those old feelings and eternal guilt.

The decision to head south was as much a pragmatic choice as a deliberate one. They would have to head south to Chicago. For Doug, it was the surest way back to his girls, and that was all that mattered right now. Molly pushed away, falling slowly back against the door. Her eyes opened grudgingly to him, seeming at first as if she didn’t recognize him, or was sizing him up somehow.

Doug drew the truck to the side of the road and shut off the engine. The cold and silence of the night surrounded them. Molly sat up, wincing as she brushed her cheek while pulling back a lock of hair. He turned to her. There was confusion in the dark pools of her eyes.

“We were driving to, to…” Molly struggled to piece together her shattered thoughts. “All of the sudden…”

“Its okay,” he told her, his voice low and even. “You had…I’m sorry about your partner.”

She looked up at him quickly. Her expression was fluid and broken. “He was a good man, Doug. He didn’t deserve to die…”

“We are going after the people who did this,” he told her. “I’m tired of running and hiding.”

“Doug, they mean to start a war. Shosa and these mercenaries, they’re behind this, I’m sure.” Molly swallowed hard, her throat burning from thirst. She needed water, and a moment to sort out some things. Doug could help her with the former, and reach past her. He pulled open the glove box and pulled out a plastic bottle of water. He barely got the cap off when she took the bottle and gulped down two long swallows.

“Whoa,” he drew the bottle from her lips.

Molly nodded appreciatively. “I was investigating the death of Senator Bernstein. The official cause of death is acute brain hemorrhage. But there was more. The hemorrhage, it was as if the vessels had been burned away, hot enough to blister the flesh and leave a black residue.”

“I don’t get the connection.”

Two others died in an identical fashion, a US Attorney and a pentagon Colonel, both with their sights on…”

“FIRSTTHRUST INC!” Doug exclaimed.

“And Umberto Shosa.”

“Change the world as fundamentally as the discovery of fire.”

“Sorry?”

“Something Fallahi said right before he was killed,” said Doug. He turned to the wheel and started the truck. The engine came to life with a roar. With the motor the radio came to life, just as the news came on. Molly reached over and turned up the volume. The female announcer’s voice was even and emotionless:

“Iranian officials are accusing the US of waging a biological sneak attack for the deaths of all but one of the American captives, as well as scores of others in that country. IRNA, the Islamic republic News Agency reported that scores of people had died mysterious and sudden deaths, including that of an entire village near the sight where Iranian forces brought down two American helicopters on a rescue mission. White House and Pentagon officials did not immediately comment on the rapidly moving events in the Gulf, or regarding Iran’s accusations, but did say the President will give a rare Eight a.m. address to the nation tomorrow about the rising tensions between Iran and the United States. This is NPR.”

“Nano-weapons,” said Doug heavily. “That’s what killed Bernstein and the others. They’re testing the weapons against live targets in Iran.”

“God help us,” said Molly.

Doug pulled the truck back into the road. “If there ‘s a God, he’ll damn the human race for this abomination for sure.”

“What are we going to do?” Molly asked. “We have to tell somebody.”

“You aided and abetted a felon,” said Doug. “Our only hope is to create enough of a ruckus that it makes everyone pay attention>”

“How do you propose to do that?”

He looked over at her, finding her so beautiful by the soft green light of the dash. “Figure that out on the way to Chicago.”

“Chicago?”

“They’ll expect us to run away, but we are gonna take the fight right to their doorstep.”

Monday, August 16, 2010

The Big Blue Sky: Fifty-two

Doug yawned and shook the lingering sleep fogging his thoughts and weighing upon every movement. The window of the old Ford truck was down, the cold wind and errant drops of icy rain helping to revive him. Doug cried out and pulled at the wheel, doing everything he could to speed that process, and battle the confusing cascade of broken thoughts of Molly, the girls, Jane and more.

He rounded a wide bend, descending a long hill. There was something in the road ahead, but it was far away, and impossible to tell for sure. At first it appeared to be a terrible accident. The smaller of the two vehicles had taken a terrible broadside and had skidded off onto the shoulder. Parts of the vehicle lay scattered across the road: plastic and metal parts. The right front tire was missing, the rear tire flat on its side beneath the rear panel. The passenger side had clearly taken the full force of the impact, and was crush from the front fender clear to the rear bumper, all of it driven nearly to the center of what remained of the vehicle. Doug muttered a small prayer for anyone inside, until he saw someone climb from the larger vehicle, cocked at an angle, and partly on the steep slope at the side of the road, with an automatic weapon in his hands.

He hadn’t recognized the big black Suburban at first, but now knew instantly what had happened. The driver remained inside, apparently dazed from the impact, and leaning over the steering wheel. It was the man seated behind the driver with the weapon, now standing dead center in the road, leveling the gun at Doug and the on-rushing Ford, waving it back.

Doug jammed his foot down hard on the accelerator without thinking. Even as the gunman raised the weapon to his shoulder and prepared to fire, Doug could see the expression flee the man’s face, resigned fully to the realization he was about to die. Doug ducked precisely the instant bullets skipped off the hood and slapped through the windshield, burying themselves in the vinyl seat above him.

He was only vaguely aware of the initial impact, a sickly wet thump as the Ford and gunman met suddenly. The impact carried the man violently backwards, his chest already crushed, his vital organs rupturing in a spray of bright red blood from his mouth and nose. It was eclipsed by the abrupt calamity of the Ford hammering the Suburban sideways, severing the dying gunman’s legs, and mortally wounding the grizzled veteran within.

The Suburban slid sideways and tipped, tumbling down the steep embankment, where it came to a rest against a tree on one side. The tires spun impotently in air, the engine revving momentarily, as if in a final dying gasp. The riotous sound, the scrape and crash of the impact fled, echoing among the trees and night, replaced quickly by absolute silence; the aftermath of a terrific battle.

Doug sat up, looking out from the bullet riddled windshield of the old Ford to the smoking heap of the suburban, half amazed to be unhurt let alone alive. He climbed out and picked up the automatic weapon lying in the road beside the bisected gunman’s still quivering body. From the Suburban a single figure climbed from the driver’s shattered window. Doug, without a shred of emotion or remorse (both would come later) slid the bolt back to chamber a round and fired once. The figure grunted and tumbled backwards from view. Doug tossed the weapon aside and turned towards the shattered remains of the Jetta.

Molly fought for consciousness. Time came as fragmented as the bits of glass in her lap. Shards peppered her hands and face, trickling silky-warm blood. She had only the vaguest impression of what had happened, and little more of the press of a body against her. Pain, such as it was, hadn’t come yet, but still remained hidden behind a shroud of shock and bewilderment. A feeble whimper escaped her blood speckled lips.

There was someone above her, and though she sensed an urgency in some distantly familiar voice, it was still far too much far too soon to process properly. All at once, with that voice the world and an ocean of boiling hot pain came flooding in upon her.

“Come on,” Doug Springer cried. “We have to get out of here.”

Doug strained to open her door, which had jammed during the impact. The sickly sweet bite of leaking gasoline filled the air, strong enou8gh that Doug fought a growing panic, as he pressed a foot to the car for leverage and gave one last mighty heave. The door snapped open, groaning loudly on its hinges, the edge grinding into the gravel at the side of the road. Molly slid sideways from the vehicle, falling into Doug’s arms as he pulled her free and laid her gently on the grassy shoulder.

“My partner,” she moaned, tensing as Doug pulled a bit of glass imbedded in her cheek. Dark red blood gushed immediately.

“Don’t move,” said Doug. He looked back along the road, past the carnage and over the deserted highway. It wouldn’t be long before someone came along, but he was afraid to move Molly before he was certain she wasn’t seriously injured. He looked over carefully, touching her limbs, pressing gently on her stomach and lower ribs, relieved that she didn’t appear to be seriously injured, but for some cuts and bruises.

Moon,” she said blankly. Her eyes stared into the whispering rain and swiftly moving storm clouds and knew. “Is he?”

“I’m sorry, Molly.”

She looked up into his eyes. He slowly drew his hand from her forehead. The blood flowing from the wound in her cheek had slowed. She pulled the sleeve of her jacket over her hand and pressed it there. She tried to sit up, falling back with a groan. He helped her, holding her shoulders. Molly fell back against his chest, felt suddenly safe there.

“Can you stand?”

“I think so, but we’d better hurry,” she said, “before I pass out.”

Molly wished to stand, but her legs were having none of it, and Doug caught her once more. He lifted her into his arms, stepping over part of the gunman. Molly looked at him as if he was a savior or some sort of guardian angel. A moment later she passed out cold.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

The Big Blue Sky: Fifty-one

The bodies lay in the alley, not twenty yards from bristling coils of razor wire strung across the street and around the long apartment block in both directions. The man was face down, appearing as though he had been frozen in mid run. He was dressed in a loose fitting beige kafiya. His body dipped unnaturally in the middle where dark blood pooled, as if it was held in a bowl. One arm lay close to one side, the palm turned upward. The other had suffered the full weight of the man’s falling body and was bent cruelly just above the elbow.

Beside him lay a middle aged woman. She was sprawled on her back, one arm outstretched and pleading. Her handsome Persian face was pale, and painted with a mixture of agony and confusion. She was dressed in a pink terry-cloth bathrobe, now open to expose a white blood spattered slip beneath. A loosely tied hijab covered the woman’s long dark hair, which was streaked with rivulets of silver. The young Azeri conscript who had fired the fatal wounds became so inconsolable that he had to be hospitalized.

The entire block had been cordoned off, trapping a number of people within. Razor wire and flood lights went off, the perimeter secured by soldiers, police and guard dogs. It had been simultaneous, four of the six American captives died almost immediately. A fifth was clinging to life in a military hospital, unconscious and without any notable brain activity. The last, a young Army Staff Sergeant, who had been held alone in a bank vault near the airport was apparently unaffected. All of the officers who had taken part in the battle and had accompanied the Americans to Tehran, seventy soldiers as well as an entire village near the crash site and simply dropped dead, as if someone had flipped a switch. Given the circumstances, a shoot to kill order for anyone attempting to escape the quarantined area was arguably unavoidable.

The bodies were the human face to the unfolding tragedy. The quarantines all around the country had proved nightmarish to pull off. People fled in panic, trudging through sewers, disappearing into the night or slipping through cordons as they struggled to close off whole blocks amid urban sprawl. Police and soldiers and doctors were allowed to pass after viewing the bodies, and few if any precautions were taken once the order was given to move the dead. If the deaths had been caused by a pathogen that was easily transmitted from person to person, the initial response might well have spread it throughout the population already.

The mysterious circumstances surrounding the deaths drove the Iranian leadership into a near panic. Within an hour Iranian airspace was closed and the military thrown into chaos. The immediate reaction was that this was indeed a biological attack by the Americans, some long feared sneak attack of some sort. But it couldn’t be confirmed, and after several hastily conducted autopsies no one was any closer to an answer. In truth, in all but one of the seven independent post mortems, only one had correctly identified severe brain hemorrhage as the cause of death, and only because that was conducted in a hospital with CT Scanning equipment, as opposed to the others done at military bases, outlying clinics, and in one case, a woefully outdated local mortuary. What was sure was that it was well beyond any reasonable chance that all the deaths, occurring at precisely the same moment were a coincidence.

From the Islamic revolution during the late Seventies, Iran saw the United States as its greatest enemy. It began a long covert war between Iran and the West, with assassinations, sabotage and open hostilities. Almost immediately the new Iranian Islamic Republic adopted Hamas in Lebanon, as well as their patrons, the Palestinian Liberation organization under Yasser Arafat, joining a common front against Israel and the West. In response, the Americans aided Iraq against Saddam’s war against Tehran.

Cyber warfare against the West had been in the works for years, targeting US companies, satellites, power grids and the like. Sleeper cells had been in place since the first months of the Islamic revolutions, prepared to unleash waves of terror attacks against soft targets around the globe and across the United States. Some would attack shopping malls and public gatherings to terrorize the population, while others would target infrastructure: bring down a bridge, blow up a railway line and bring down a hand full of highway overpasses in any American city and it would become paralyzed for weeks or months.

The operatives had lived and worked in the US and the West for years, often decades, awaiting orders or the signal to undertake a given operation. Those orders would come through foreign news sources, local classifieds, coffee house message boards or Facebook. Some were ex-patriots and émigrés; others were sympathizers, criminals, and even some willing to make a fast buck.

Simultaneous to terror attacks Iran would scuttle several large freighters in the narrow Straits of Hormuz, cutting off sea-going traffic in and out of the Gulf, and effectively trapping two American fleets. Combined air and sea suicide assaults by the Iranians would turn the Gulf in a cauldron. Bridges and roads all along the Iraqi border would be mined and blown up. Already there was an alarming number of Iranian troop movements into the mountains, while others began dissolving among the population all around the country for the inevitable insurgency against an expected Allied invasion

Once the order was given, the government would scatter, or flee to sanctuaries. Iran and its people would suffer America’s punishment and the years of hardship to follow. That was their history, far more of the people than the government. The nation had lasted five thousand years, from the advent of farming through the Iron and Bronze Ages. They survived Alexander’s armies, the Mongol hordes, the Shah’s abuses, Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollahs. This they could surely endure.

But the order wasn’t given, at least not yet, despite the desperate pleas of the army and the apocalyptic fatalism of the ruling party. In the end, it was the Mullahs, the nation’s religious leaders that called for prudence. If it came to war, they said, the Mullahs would offer their unanimous support, but given the terrible destruction that would rain down upon the Iranian people, a moment’s pause, at the very least, was justified. There was still time to prevent a war, but the moments remaining grew scarcer and more precious each second that passed. No one could have known that best hope for stopping war were fighting for their lives on a lonely rain-swept stretch of road among the wilds of Northern Michigan seven thousand miles away.