true, he would have used the prevailing beliefs of the black community to lead the Church of Blacks on their crusade, for if they weren’t true, what else was left for the black community except vengeance? Virus aside, he would finally get revenge for his brother, a bad apple who had been sentenced to life in prison, then killed there while his white companion got only ten years for the same offense. Wayward or not, the difference in the punishment was grossly unfair. That was what had started him on this road to begin with, long years ago.
His penetrating gaze held the members of the church council in thrall while he explained what came next.
“The airport is in our hands so the white army can’t bring in reinforcements by air. Now we have to take the CDC before that bug kills us all. They got the cure all right. All we got to do is capture the scientists and wring their scrawny white necks until they be glad to tell us. That means no killing except the guards.
We going to wipe out every single one of them motherfuckers, then wipe our asses on they clean white underwear, but leave the scientists alive.” Qualluf could speak perfectly correct English but always threw in some black patois when in the company of his fellow blacks. Perfect English marked a brother as a white toady, no matter what his feelings.
Qualluf scanned the faces again, seeing the anticipation and anger on every face there. He thought of the millions of dark skinned bodies buried in mass graves around the world and the anger rose in him as well.
The scientists would die, too, just as soon as they disgorged their secrets. And if they didn’t give them up, they would die anyway. The small closed room reeked of stale food and body odor, a legacy of the long drive from Louisiana to Georgia. No matter. He would shower tonight, but not until he finished with the white woman. Let her shrink from his smell; let her cry and wail all she pleased; the more the better so long as others heard her. Qualluf didn’t really enjoy the experience; in fact, he felt sorry for the woman.
She had nothing to do with starting the violence, but that wouldn’t stop him. She was guilty by association, and he had to show his followers how heartless he could be, how ruthless and uncaring about any disaster befalling a white person. Besides, nothing could compare with the disaster his people were suffering.
“Okay, tomorrow be the big push. We going to take casualties but we got the power and we got the guns and we still got the bodies. You all listen to Fridge and do like he say. You know he been in the military and he know how to handle them wimpy white army boys. Just remember, do what you like to the guards and the army but don’t hurt the people inside. We got to have them if we going to live.”
Qualluf sat back and let Ali “Fridge” Green take over.
Ali was nicknamed after an old professional football player who had been called “The Refrigerator”
because of his size and irresistible momentum once he got going. Ali was a recently retired infantry Sergeant Major with more combat experience than most active duty soldiers in this era of terrorism and guerrilla tactics. His specialty had been urban warfare.
The Fridge took over and began going over the routes toward the CDC with his lieutenants, the known army positions and what they could expect in the way of resistance. He knew almost to the inch where the army guard posts were located, how they were manned and how many soldiers were on duty at any given minute. All this information was being fed to him by a lighter skinned black serving with the small army unit guarding the CDC complex. The man relished passing the data to the Church of Blacks; his wife had died three weeks ago from the Harcourt virus.
The only part of the operation that Fridge didn’t care for was that it had to be carried out during daylight hours; there was no way to compete with soldiers who had access to night vision equipment. Fortunately, the airport had been relatively easy; the small army contingent was too busy holding the lid on Atlanta proper to think of the airport, a very stupid mistake on someone’s part. With the airport in his hands, he felt like they had a good chance of succeeding. They would have the CDC complex in hand well before army reinforcements with heavy weapons could arrive. Anything coming in by chopper, he thought they could handle with the half dozen shoulder- fired missiles in their possession. Adding to that advantage, most of the metropolitan police force had disintegrated with the loss of so many blacks and the deaths of so many others trying to keep the city under control. What few were left kept to the white precincts and simply tried to limit the damage there. The black neighborhoods were left to their own devices and the whites were sticking as close to home and work as they could, fearful of being assaulted by angry and frightened blacks, or even white miscreants taking advantage of the lawlessness.
Shortly before dawn, thousands of dark skinned men and women began marching toward the CDC
complex, intent on either beating the cure out of their white scientists or putting them to death, the very same fate they believed every dark skinned human on earth faced in the near future.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
General Newman couldn’t help but be satisfied that the armed forces were finally going to be built up to a level he and the other members of the Joint Chiefs considered adequate, even if it was coming about as a result of a world wide calamity. He worried a bit about the enormous task of integrating all the recalled former servicemen and women back into the service and getting the new draftees trained and into the field, but that was what subordinates were for. His main concern was stability in the nations possessing nuclear weapons—or biowarfare agents such as the Harcourt virus, or that new one, the Goldwater virus, named after the first patient known to have died from it. He thought it was ironic that the first person to succumb had been an Israeli citizen of mixed Arab and European ancestry who had the bad luck to inherit the wrong gene from his Jewish father and Arab mother. The man had been even more unlucky to be a passenger on the aircraft harboring Nabil Hassan and his little spray bottles loaded with the deadly brew. He knew that Nabil Hassan had been caught with the goods on him and executed.
General Newman chuckled to himself, thinking that Goldwater would much rather have lived than have his name immortalized after his death as the Goldwater virus, though it was seldom called that except among professionals and those who avoided derogatory language. It was more commonly referred to, especially in casual conversation, as “The Arab Virus”, after the group it infected. In truth, he knew it was lethal even to some non- Arabs such as Iranians because of their common ancestry. And he had to give the Jews credit—they had loosed the bug even knowing it would infect some of their own citizens.
General Newman realized he couldn’t predict which nation might produce the next pandemic, though the intelligence agencies pointed to several with the possible capability. He couldn’t order them nuked, though, no matter how much he might think it would eliminate a risk. There was too much of a chance for escalation. Maybe later, if things worked out.
His primary concern now was holding the country together in the face of the increasing disruption of supplies and continuing violence in the big cities. Part of Los Angeles had burned to the ground before the bitter, vengeance-bound rioting of its black citizens had been subdued, and part of Chicago was heading in the same direction. He shuffled requests for troops and reinforcements from around the country with an eye on vital areas of industry or transportation hubs. Those received priority. Then there were the nuclear power plants.
Already, he had been forced to send reinforcements to the few plants in Africa his soldiers and airmen were guarding; White faces were anathema in that continent, and there were still plenty of revenge-minded blacks left alive. The whites of South Africa at last report had been wiped out almost to the man, though not without some fierce battles. And now that the Goldwater virus was getting up steam, he was going to be forced to send more troops, these into the Middle East, and have others ready. Israel might help later, but right now they had their hands full fighting off the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian armies, the same old antagonists who had been slugging it out for well over half a century. Whatever else happened, he had to try to keep any of those nuclear plants from melting down and contaminating the whole world.
Then there was China and India. So far both nations seemed content to make noises rather than trying to invade other countries and that was good. India especially was probably glad in some perverse way that Pakistan was under the viral gun—or their leaders might have been glad had not so many of their billion citizens been ill. Many would die, but many more would recover. If the country stayed together, it might cause trouble later on. China was even more of a problem. He seriously doubted from the intelligence he was receiving that China’s central government could prevent the country from fragmenting into a balkanized travesty of a nation, where different provinces would be ruled by warlords and with God himself not knowing who controlled their nuclear weapons.
