to any purpose, some of them contradictory, he admitted to himself, but it was the Will of Allah that mattered more than His words. His words often applied to a specific context. To kill for murder was evil, and the Koranic law on that was harsh indeed. To kill in defense of the Faith was not. Sometimes the difference between the two was clouded, and for that one had the Will of Allah as a guide. Allah wished the Faithful to be under one spiritual roof, and while many had attempted to accomplish that by reason and example, men were weak and some had to be shown more forcefully than others—and perhaps the differences between Sunni and Shi'a could be resolved in peace and love, with his hand extended in friendship and both sides giving respectful consideration to the views of the other—Daryaei was willing to go that far in his quest—but first the proper conditions had to be established. Beyond the horizon of Islam were others, and while God's Mercy applied to them as well, after a fashion, it did not apply while they sought to injure the Faith. For those people, his hand was for smiting. There was no avoiding it.
Because they did Injure the Faith, polluting it with their money and strange ideas, taking the oil away, taking the children away to educate them in corrupt ways. They sought to limit the Faith even as they did business with those who called themselves Faithful. They would resist his efforts to unify Islam. They'd call it economics or politics or something else, but really they knew that a unified Islam would threaten their apostasy and temporal power. They were the worst kind of enemies in that they called themselves friends, and disguised their intentions well enough to be mistaken for such. For Islam to unify, they had to be broken.
There really was no choice for him. He'd come here to be alone and to think, to ask God quietly if there might be another way. But the blue piece of tile had told him of all that had been, the time that had passed, the civilizations that had left nothing behind but imperfect memories and ruined buildings. He had the idea and the faith that they had all lacked. It was merely a question of applying those ideas, guided by the same Will that had placed the stars in the sky. His God had brought flood and plague and misfortune as tools of the Faith. Mohammed had himself fought wars. And so, reluctantly, he told himself, would he.
35 OPERATIONAL CONCEPT
WHEN MILITARY FORCES move, other forces watch with interest, though what they do about it depends on the instructions of their leaders. The move of Iranian forces into Iraq was entirely administrative. The tanks and other tracked vehicles came by low-hauler trailers, while the trucks rolled on their own wheels. There were the usual problems. A few units took wrong turns, to the embarrassment of their officers and the rage of superiors, but soon enough each of the three divisions had found a new home, in every case co-located with a formerly Iraqi division of the same type. The traumatically enforced downsizing of the Iraqi army had made for almost enough room for the new occupants of the bases, and scarcely had they arrived but the staffs were integrated in corps units, and joint exercises began to acquaint one grouping with the other. Here, too, there were the usual difficulties of language and culture, but both sides used much the same weapons and doctrine; and the staff officers, the same all over the world, worked to hammer out a common ground. This, too, was watched from satellite.
'How much?'
'Call it three corps formations,' the briefing officer told Admiral Jackson. 'One of two armored divisions, and two of an armored and a heavy mechanized. They're a little light in artillery, but they have all the rolling stock they need. We spotted a bunch of command-and-control vehicles running around in the desert, probably doing unit- movement simulations for a CPX.' That was a Command-Post Exercise, a war game for professionals.
'Anything else?' Robby asked.
'The gunnery ranges at this base here, west of Abu Sukayr, are being bulldozed and cleaned up, and the air base just north at Nejef has a few new tenants, MiGs and Sukhois, but on IR their engines are cold.'
'Assessment?' This came from Tony Bretano.
'Sir, you can call it anything,' the colonel replied. 'New country integrating their military, there's going to be a lot of getting-to-know-you stuff. We're surprised by the integrated corps formations. It's going to pose administrative difficulties, but it might be a good move from the political-psychological side. This way, they're acting like they really are one country.'
'Nothing threatening at all?' the SecDef asked.
'Nothing overtly threatening, not at this time.'
'How quick could that corps move to the Saudi border?' Jackson asked, to make sure his boss got the real picture.
'Once they're fully fueled and trained up? Call it forty-eight to seventy-two hours. We could do it in less than half the time, but we're trained better.'
'Force composition?'
'Total for the three corps, we're talking six heavy divisions, just over fifteen hundred main battle tanks, over twenty-five hundred infantry fighting vehicles, upwards of six hundred tubes—still haven't got a handle on their red team, Admiral. That's artillery, Mr. Secretary,' the colonel explained. 'Logistically they're on the old Soviet model.'
'What's that mean?'
'Their loggies are organic to the divisions. We do that also, but we maintain separate formations to keep our maneuver forces running.'
'Reservists for the most part,' Jackson told the Secretary. 'The Soviet model allows for a more integrated maneuver force, but only for the short term. They can't sustain operations as long as we can, in terms of time or distance.'
'The admiral is correct, sir,' the briefing officer went on. 'In 1990, when the Iraqis jumped into Kuwait, they went about as far as their logistical tail allowed. They had to stop to replenish.'
'That's part of it. Tell him the other part,' Jackson ordered.
'After a pause of from twelve to twenty-four hours, they were ready to move again. The reason they didn't was political.'
'I always wondered about that. Could they have taken the Saudi oil fields?'
'Easy,' the colonel said. 'He must have thought a lot about that in later months,' the officer added without sympathy.
'So, we have a threat here?' Bretano was asking simple questions and listening to the answers. Jackson liked that. He knew what he didn't know, and wasn't embarrassed about learning things.
'Yes, sir. These three corps represent a potential striking force about equal in power to what Hussein used. There would be other units involved, but they're just occupying forces. That's the fist right here,' the colonel said, tapping the map with his pointer.
'But it's still in their pocket. How long to change that?'
'A few months at minimum to do it right, Mr. Secretary. It depends most of all on their overall political intentions. All of these units are individually trained up to snuff by local standards. Integrating their corps staffs and organizations is the real task ahead for them.'
'Explain,' Bretano ordered.
'Sir, I guess you could call it a management team. Everybody has to get to know everybody else so that they can communicate properly, start thinking the same way.'
'Maybe it's easier to think of it as a football team, sir.' Robby took it further. 'You don't just take eleven guys and put them in a huddle together and expect them to perform properly. You have to have everybody reading out of the same playbook, and everybody has to know what everybody else is able to do.'
SecDef nodded. 'So it's not the hardware we're worried about. It's the people.'
'That's right, sir,' the colonel said. 'I can teach you to drive a tank in a few minutes, but it'll be a while before I want you driving around in my brigade.'
'That's why you people must love having a new Secretary come in every few years,' Bretano observed with a wry smile.
'Mostly they learn pretty fast.'
'So, what do we tell the President?'
THE CHINESE AND Taiwanese navies were keeping their respective distances, as though an invisible line were drawn north-south down the Formosa Strait. The latter kept pacing the former, interposing itself between its
