break them up. In future, we’ll have to make sure war casualties get sent to different reception areas.
“Anyway, back to the issue. The political alliance that stands behind the Human Expeditionary Alliance is a fragile thing. It’s held so far because of the pressure from outside but how long that will remain the case is a good question. As long as this damned stalemate holds, the chances are that some of the old issues we faced will reemerge and screw the whole thing up. Humanity’s got to draw a line under the past and make a fresh start if this thing is going to work. If we don’t, the war effort will fall apart. I never thought I’d say this but North Korea’s actually setting a good example. They’re coming in from the cold, no matter how difficult they’re making the process.”
“So, we don’t get our gold back.” Asanee sounded disappointed.
“Not a chance. You’ll have to go and dig some more. Anyway, here we are.”
Petraeus had to admit that General Asanee’s command team had this kind of thing down to a fine art. Long practice he supposed. As the two generals approached the conference room doors, two of her men moved ahead and ostentatiously flung them open. Petraeus and Asanee stalked into the room, the rest of their party following them in and spreading out so the Myanmar ruling junta members were covered by their guns. They rose reluctantly too their feet, acknowledging the fact that they were the beaten side, waiting to hear the terms they were offered. The two H.E.A. generals just stared at them for a few moments before Petraeus broke the silence.
“You have sent Michael-Lan-Yahweh the messages as we instructed?”
Than Shwe nodded, his face a picture of anger, resentment and humiliation.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
“We have done as your terms dictated. We have sent Michael-Lan a message telling him that a large stockpile of heroin, methamphetamines, ecstasy and other drugs have been gathered here and he would come and collect it. Otherwise we will have to destroy it. We have not yet received a reply.”
“Good. We have some special weapons technicians with us. They need to see that stockpile right now.”
Chapter Thirty Seven
West of Hacienda Heights, Los Angeles, California
The location had been chosen with great care. Uriel’s wings were still not fully healed and that had left his ability to fly impaired. In any case, he had come to the opinion that flying over his target, as has been his tradition, for millennia was no longer practical. Human aircraft and missiles made it far too dangerous. He had tried that tactic twice and both times it had come close to killing him.
This time, he was trying a different approach. The hills west of Hacienda Heights gave an excellent view over the city of Los Angeles. He would have line-of-sight access to some of the most populated areas of the mega-city beneath him and a huge number of people would where Uriel could bring his peace to them. He had thought long and hard about that. At El Paso he had tried to annihilate everybody and everything within his reach, only to fail and bring peace only to a small proportion of them. Based on that lesson, he had tried to concentrate his power on a small community at Eucalyptus Hills. There, he had come achingly close to bringing his peace to the entire community. If it had not been for the aircraft and the missiles…
Uriel felt unfamiliar feelings running through his mind. He hated the humans and their machines for what they had done to him and mixed in with the hatred was rage that his divinely-ordered purpose should be denied. He fought the emotions, aware that they represented mortal sins, and tried to squash them. This time it would be different, this time he would stay on the ground where the missiles could not strike at him. It had taken days for the humans to corner him after Eucalyptus Hills, he would need only a fraction of that time to bring his peace to the community that would lay helpless at his feet.
To take them all or just concentrate on a few? That was the decision that Uriel faced. He had tried for all at El Paso and failed. He had tried for a few at Eucalyptus Hills – and failed. But the size of his target at El Paso meant that even failure meant that a large number of souls had found their way to perfect peace. Uriel made his decision, he would try for all. Even a small percentage of a large number was better than a large percentage of a few.
Uriel made his decision. He had locked in on his target, he had selected his strategy. He knew what to do and where. Now, he would place his faith in the All-Knowing Father of All and honor His Immaculate Name by bringing more of these recalcitrant humans to their final peace. al Za’im, West Bank
The air-raid sirens woke a very resentful Husni al-Sohl from well-deserved and much-needed sleep. The last year and a half had been a very strange time for him. Once a dedicated member of Hamas and a key member in one of its undercover cells, now he worked in an Israeli munitions plant, helping to churn out the sub-munitions that the world needed to fight off the satans who had declared war upon it. The Israelis he worked alongside were equally confused; once these same submunitions would have gone to arm missiles and artillery rounds. Ammunition that was intended to defend Eretz Israel against the hordes of terrorists and assassins that besieged it. Only, The Message had changed everything. Mankind had a common enemy that counted for more than petty local squabbles.
At least that was what Husni al-Sohl believed and the Israelis who worked beside him had said the same. They had all noted something rather peculiar. When the command to lay down and die had come from in high, the religious fanatics, the idealogues and extremists who had shouted longest and loudest about the purity of their faith had been conspicuous by their absence from the dead. Those who had sent others out to die in suicide bombings, who had incited others to die for their beliefs, who had fired people’s hearts but seemed curiously reluctant to do any other sort of firing had found many excuses for not obeying the command that formed a key part of The Message.
Oh, there had been those who had laid down and died, but they had been the quiet ones, the ones who had kept their religions in their hearts, not their mouths and their fists. The others, the ones who had made ostentatious public displays of their faiths, they’d used their alleged religion as a path to power. With The Message, some had slunk away and tried to hide, others attempted to carry on their foolishness. They hadn’t lasted, their previous supporters had seen them for what they were and killed them. Now, they had all gone from both sides and things had settled down to an uneasy truce. There was too much history, too much spilled blood, for the truce to be anything but uneasy but al-Sohl and his Israeli co-workers both agreed that with the self-serving fanatics out of way, they could at least agree to differ quietly. And everybody needed the sub-munitions that the factory made.
The sirens that had blasted him awake made him think, for one brief moment, that the bad days had returned and he was back in Gaza with the Israeli helicopters closing in. So many had died, blown apart as the missiles had plowed into their targets. Was al Za’im to be a target now? There was an Israeli border guard post only a few yards away. Had one of the idiotic morons who had brought so much death down tried to attack it? The fact that he hadn’t heard any explosions suggested otherwise. Then his brain woke up fully and he realized they weren’t air raid sirens. They were warnings that a portal was opening and that an attack would be coming through it soon.
“What is happening?” His wife had woken as well and was staring around with frightened eyes
“It is an attack. Perhaps it is Uriel, deciding to leave the Americans alone. Or some other devil.” He grabbed her arm and hustled her to their shelter room, the one whose walls were lined with extra-think layers of aluminum foil. As they went, he glanced out of the window and saw a black ellipse forming to the east of the township.
417th Flight Test Squadron, Edwards Air Force Base, California
The wailing sirens made the base look as if it had been a giant ant’s nest and somebody had kicked it over. A stream of pick-up trucks was spreading out from the base buildings and heading for the aircraft that were already being prepped for flight by their ground crews. Some headed for the row of F-15Es, a few in the original lizard green camouflage paint but most in the red/gray mottled camouflage of Hell. The paint job wasn’t an affection, the paint itself was designed to protect the aircraft from the abrasion caused by flying through the dust of Hell’s atmosphere. Others headed for the two B-1Cs that were parked in the test area. Their paint job was white as befitted prototypes that were under test. A very accelerated test program, the B-1s were desperately needed and the Air Force couldn’t wait for a leisurely pre-war test and evaluation.
Two other pick-up trucks headed for strange-looking aircraft that were parked by themselves. Boeing 747s they had been, once, but now they had the firing turret of a chemical oxygen-iodine laser in their noses. They were YAL-1s and they had first priority for the runway. Technically at least, although they had to get there before the
