Chapters
- In The Beginning (Started March 12, 2025 3:30 PM EST)
- Jerusalem
- The Era Of The First Temple
- The Second Temple
- The Late Roman And Byzantine Eras
- Shia Fatimids And The Great Schism
- Jerusalem And The Crusades (Coming soon...)
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Brian Joseph Johns
Opening Notes:
According to my research of how most special operations unfold, when it comes to chatter between team members (or squads), there is no character building banter between them and the reason for this is because the comms are specifically for relaying timing and mission critical data between squad members. So you'll never hear lines during an active mission by members of such teams like:
"Remember that time we were in that bar in Tangiers, and old Roger stood up and threw his beret at bartender?"
When you see that kind of activity in the movies or read it in the pages of a book, most often this is because the writers need to use every opportunity they can to acquaint you with the operators taking part in such a mission. That's a necessary part of the story telling, because they're people, and if you don't understand that and that they have their hopes and dreams too, then why would you even care, other than the natural propensity of most people to have some degree of compassion towards their fellow humankind.
Soldiers do joke and quite often, but rarely if ever in the midst of an operation. Focus, not levity is most often key to their success, and we're talking about professionals.
Perhaps that speech before their last stand might have such elements of levity, and call upon their love of whatever it is they're protecting, but while they're doing they're thing, there's no small talk, unless they did so in an instance to declare their independence from me and what I'm saying here. When they speak to each other, they own their communications. All of them.
So in a story like this, my use of banter between operators is a means by which I'm letting you know that these people doing these difficult tasks that often happen unbeknownst to us in order to protect and preserve the peace, the world over, have hopes and dreams as much so as any one of us. The difference is, that they often put their lives on the line to ensure that we have ours.
Hence, we owe it to them to remind the world that there's people inside of They Who Stand On Guard.
Please be aware that many complex topics related to history and religion will be touched upon througout the course of the story, and in doing so I hope to retain a high degree of objectivity and fairness when dealing with these topics. Everyone will get their fair say and representation.
Brian Joseph Johns
Shhhh! Digital Media Presents:
The Butterfly Dragon: We Who Stand On Guard - Episode 10
In The Beginning
When you're staring down the length of your SMG, through an IR sight at a group of targets during an operation, you get to know quite a bit about those whom you're observing.
For one, I know that one of them is left-handed (whom I'll refer to as Lefty from herein), but trying to keep that hidden, indicating that he was likely disciplined as a child for exhibiting such involuntary behaviour. It wasn't the fault of his parents, who grew up during a time of turmoil and superstition in a region of the world that has not had as much rest as it certainly deserves.
Their situation is much like living near the caldera of an active volcano, when it comes to the peace and politics of the region. It sputters and froths a lot keeping people on edge, but everyone knows that someday the pressure beneath the surface is going to overcome the forces containing it, and its going to blow.
Full tilt.
Living amidst pressure of that kind can take a toll on people, and shape you in ways that would be very difficult for those of us living in the relative lap of luxury comparatively so to fully understand or appreciate. Not only that, but the people for whom that was merely part of their daily regimen would in all likelihood humbly write such a struggle off as just a part of anyone's daily life.
That doesn't mean that we should feel guilty for our fortune, as these times are tough for us all in some way or another. It does mean though, that in our position of relative comfort a great distance from that ever rumbling volcano, that we should consider the state of things and how we got here.
Lefty certainly didn't think anything of the fact that using his left hand where others would use their right should get him into any trouble, but it did, and that changed him enough so that thirty-five years down the road, his condition would be obvious to an operator watching him in the middle of the night through an infra-red sight affixed to his MP5, as Lefty helped a crew of four other men arm the nuclear warheads on a shipment of cruise missiles they had received earlier in the same evening, less than one hundred and sixty kilometers from Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel, which presumably would be one of their targets if ever fired.
Lefty was the driver of the truck of said shipment, and had two labourers with him, one of whom (Trim Beard) had obviously done much labour in his life, and was remarkably fit and well fed for someone who was not overtly a member of any of the militant insurgencies of the region (HAMAS or ISIS for instance).
My guess is that he was all show, and probably very frightened with the prospect of being presented with a Kalashnikov and expected to use it against the threat to their borders and to their way of life. He instead made up for this fear by taking part in the logistics as a labourer, who had obviously learned much about installing and maintaining such ad-hoc installations recently, given how this particular group had come into possession of a kit whose price tag was likely near fifty million, including the materials unaccounted for which were certainly the key component of the warheads themselves.
Technology was making installations like this more affordable than ever before, and this was the entry level such installation being offered by the very outfit my people were investigating.
The other labourer (Sidekick) was thin and clearly trying very hard to be useful and to make an impression, despite the fact that he struggled with most of the heavy lifting and mechanical aspects that their work entailed on this particular night. He often joked aloud, to which Lefty would react by telling him to shut-up and get to work. If Lefty didn't say anything, then Trim Beard would take advantage in the opening in seniority and have a go at Sidekick, much the same telling him to be quiet and work more and talk less. Definitely a very clear pecking order in their shipping operation and in all, they probably weren't that much different from similar trucking crews in other parts of the world, if you didn't factor in the aspect about them helping to assemble a nuclear capable launch platform.
What was also very apparent, is that Lefty was working for the man who spent most of the time while the site was being assembled speaking on the phone, (whom I'll refer to as Phone Man). With whom he was speaking wasn't one of those critical aspects that had made its way down the pipeline to us in the field at that point. He was very calm and collect despite the danger of that with which he was tampering by installing an ad-hoc nuclear launch platform on his farm. There was resolve in him, and he'd clearly given it much thought and felt no quarter over the risks entailed either towards himself, and the community of which he was a part. A man who would never kill with his own two hands, but would employ machinery to kill thousands of those whose faces he'd never have to see.
Much the same as he, was the man (Tech Head) who had assembled and utilized the mechanical loading mechanism which they'd operated by a hand crank, lowering the missiles down into the magazine, the first cruise missile into the feed tray from where they'd be loaded onto the firing platform once powered with electricity. He was a man who had done much mechanical work before, and certainly seemed to possess an uncanny familiarity with arms and armament. He could probably operate and maintain small arms, including heavy weapons, but was much more of a threat given large armaments of the kind used in mobile or permanent installations. He was focused on his work, and if it hadn't been a launch platform he was assembling, it might have been a grain elevator for one of the farmers, given different circumstances. The same skills, applied to very different tools.
All five of these men could just as easily have been hard at work on any continent and amongst any community, assembling some kind of machinery for their prosperity and livelihood as many people do the world over. Instead, they were constructing the means to a sudden and terrifying end for their neighbours a short distance from them, and all of this could be seen clearly through the infra-red device affixed to my own MP5SD SMG, the business end of which was pointed in their direction, ready to take them all down if necessary.
When looking through the sights at a tango, from a position of tactical obscurity, one might be tempted to assume that its a power trip for the trigger man. Holding within their trigger finger, the lives of five men, or at least in this case, the three that I'd tagged, the other two being the primary focus of Donahue, who lay prone upon a sandbank ridge overlooking the AO* about three hundred meters to the south of my position.
In all honesty and during an operation, or at least in the case of veteran operators, there is very little going on in the way of reflection, either regarding the life circumstances that found your tango in the sights of your crosshair, or your own life and the meaning of it all. We're trained and filtered not to consider anything of that nature, especially so during an operation.
We work with hard data and facts pertinent to the tactical operation itself, and it was only due to my own involvement with the investigation that I had any clue of the inner workings of what was behind this newly emerged network of low cost, highly effective armaments and sites and their growing deployment in the Middle East region.
These men, each of them had knowingly traveled down a road (some more aware than others) and were well beyond the point of no return. They knew they were assembling a facility whose sole purpose was the extinguishing of thousands of lives in an instant, their targets a relatively short distance from their current location, and given the secrecy of the emergence of this site, this was not a deterrent in the form of a political manouevre to counter the speculated nuclear capabilities of their neighbours. This was a clear threat to thousands of innocent civilians, and to the stability of the region.
A much bigger question though was hidden in the midst of this mess and it was seldom a question that people stopped to ask themselves and truly consider it long enough that we might one day come to a solution. In different circumstances, these men would undoubtedly be involved in their society in some peaceful and productive way. Who is to say that any one of us suddenly thrust into their shoes wouldn't just as quickly become part of the pack:
When you run with the wolves, then be a wolf. When you run from them, then be the prey. Know your place in the twisted paths of this jungle. Play your part and play it well, for survival depends upon it. Certainly an anecdote explored by Kipling, and in this existence, world and lifetime, it was more than applicable to us all.
However, that still begged a solution and the question, where did it all begin?
...
Jerusalem
Jerusalem. That's not the entire answer, but it is certainly a big part of it, and in order to understand why many nations of the region feel a strong connection to the city, we have to examine its long history.
It is a city that has been layed entirely to waste twice over during its lifetime. Invaders have laid siege to the city no less than twenty-three times. It has been attacked fifty-two times, while being captured or recaptured forty-four.
Evidence suggests that the city emerged sometime around four thousand BCE, in a pocket of history between the middle bronze age and the early iron age. It was formed as groups of nomadic tribes began settling in the region near
Gihon Spring, these tribes being mostly composed of the people originally from Caanan.
This remained the case between fifteen hundred (1500) BCE (approximately 3525 years ago) until around twelve seventy-four (1274) BCE, the date which began its transition into its future by way of the Battle Of Kadesh and was only punctuated by the Battle of Djahy ninety-seven years later.
The invaders came from a variety of sources, certainly the Hittites and their allies early on, though the most prominent of those speculated in later battles were known as the Sea People, a people who were exceptionally skilled in naval craft and ordinance, speculated to have possibly originated as the Minoans, one of most advanced cultures of that time.
The Era Of First Temple
It eventually became the independent city-state of the City of David in the United Kingdom of Israel, taking Jerusalem from it's then occupiers, the
Jebusites who'd long held it. David invaded in 1010 BCE, marking the beginning of the Golden Age of Israel.
Shortly thereafter, forty-eight years later in 962 BCE, Solomon, King David's son, erects the
First Temple, and when Solomon dies, it marks the end of the Golden Age of Israel. In Jerusalem however, its growing Jewish population and culture remain, while its most prominent Jewish citizens are eventually exiled and imprisoned in the nation of Babylon.
Over the next two-hundred years from 930 BCE, Jerusalem is sacked by Egypt, the Phillistines, the Arabs and the Ethiopians, until in 733 BCE, it becomes a vassal of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, followed by it being taken again by the Twenty-Sixth dynasty of Egypt, and then bounced back to the Neo-Assyrian Empire (who were at this time known as the Neo-Babylonians), Jerusalem itself having been leveled (including the First Temple) in 586 BCE.
The Second Temple
It becomes the property of the Achaemenid Empire who conquer the Neo-Babylonians in 539 BCE, and it thrives under
King Cyrus the Great, who allows the Jewish people in Babylonian captivity to return to Jerusalem and
rebuild the Temple. Much later in history, the waves of these liberated Babylonian Jewish are often alluded to in popular culture.
In the third century (332) BCE, Alexander the Great captures Jerusalem (with minimal damage or casualties) from the Persians after a successful campaign against Tyre. Jerusalem remains under the control of the Macedonians, until thanks to politics and the line of succession in the wake of the death of Alexander the Great, the Diadochi (Alexander's own powerful military figures, family and friends) eventually partition the state, and from here Jerusalem is transferred between ruling clans of the post Alexander empire until it eventually ends up under Ptolemaic rule in three-twenty (320) BCE.
Eventually Jerusalem ends up in the hands of the Seleucid Empire, who like the Ptolemaic Empire had respected Jewish rights and their institutions. Antiochus IV Epiphanes takes over the reigns of the Seleucid Empire through succession however, and through his efforts to quell a civil war between the Hellenistic Jewish community (whose worship included Jewish traditions mixed with Greek gods), and the traditional Jewish religion, by abolishing the Sabbath and circumcision and a host of other Jewish traditions, ends up spurring the
Maccabean Revolt.
The revolt by the Maccabees is motivated by the protection of traditional Jewish religion from the state sponsored Hellenistic Jewish movement, though Antiochus IV Epiphanes actual role is often debated by scholars. Regardless, the Maccabeans recapture Jerusalem and rededicate the Second Temple, the origins behind the Jewish holiday of
Hanukkah, however the Maccabee revolt eventually ends with the death of Judas Maccabeus, and Jerusalem eventually ends up under the possession of the Hasmonean kingdom, one of the powerful Macedonian family clans of the region.
The Hasmodeans manage to hang on to Jerusalem, even paying an enormous tribute to spare the city from recapture by Seleucid King Antiochus VII Sidetes, and the city's influence upon the region only grows, until it eventually ends up in the hands of the Romans in 63 BCE, and into the early beginnings of Christianity, though much of this history has no scholarly consensus of record and non-sectarian backing. Regardless of this record, it is one of the most prominent aspects illustrating the strength of the connections between the people of the region and their beliefs, and to the city of Jerusalem.
A city for whom many throughout the entirety of modern human history have died and on every side of the proverbial fence. Fences that until this day, still unite and divide many throughout humanity.
Jerusalem's Hasmonean rule would begin its decline with the invasion of Jerusalem by the Romans under Pompey the Great, who despite having access and seeing the temple for himself, decided to leave it entirely intact.
The Hasmonean Kingdom is eventually divided into five regions ruled by councils known as sanhedrin, while Marcus Crassus loots the temple, taking its riches with him. Caesar's Civil War begins, as he and Pompey compete for rule of the Roman Empire, with Jerusalem being under Pompey's jurisdiction.
Eventually Caesar wrests control of the Roman Empire, but Jerusalem still remains under control of those under Pompey's allegiance. Jerusalem is eventually retaken by King Herod, an appointee under Julius Caesar who upon gaining control of the city, expands and enhances the Second Temple and between six and four BCE, Jesus is presented at the Temple, some forty days after his birth, according to scripture and without non-sectarian reference.
According to the same sources, some thirty years later and Jesus would be tempted by Satan, evict the merchants from Herod's Second Temple, heal a man blind from birth, eventually drawing the growing dissent of the people until he finally arrested by the sanhedrin and under Governor Pontius Pilate, sentenced to die by roughing and crucifiction sometime between thirty-three (33) and thirty-six (36) AD, completing his martyrdom according to religious texts.
The rest of the first century AD would find both Jewish people and the Christianis would find themselves under constant persecution under Roman Emperor Nero, spurring the Great Jewish Revolt and the First Jewish-Roman War, until Titus lays siege to Jerusalem and summarily ends the First Jewish-Roman war, destroying the Temple of Herod. Christian leaders are exiled to the city of Pella.
Late Roman And Byzantine Eras
Over the next two hundred years, the city would undergo changes in both leadership and its cultural identity when Emperor Hadrian rebuilds the city, making it monumental to the Roman God Jupiter, who is derived from the Greek god Zeus (obviously aggravating the traditional Jewish population by bringing up such references to Hellenistic Roman ideas, which had been an issue since the Seleucids).
Meanwhile, the Christian religion, spread almost entirely by word alone, continues to spread throughout the region. Both the traditional Jewish population and early Christians oppose growing persecution by the Romans, many of whom likely want to see their proto-Roman-Greco Judaism replace traditional Judaism as the empire's foundation religion, which would strengthen and unite the Meditterranean population of the region under a familiar deity, while being administered entirely by the Romans.
At the doorstep of the Byzantine era, Constantine I finally legalizes Christianity with the Edict Of Milan, and with the relief of Roman pressure, Christianity begins growing more and more rapidly, even at this point without so much as a formal printed religious text to document its divine legitimacy. A fact that would change one hundred years later, when the first scribed version of the New Testament would arise in 411 AD. From these origins four hundred years after the founding prophet of the religion had died, Christianity would begin its spread through written word, being copied only by scribes for nearly a thousand years to come.
Under the Byzantines, a number of important events throughout its history would come to transpire, including the destruction of the Temple of Venus by Helena, Constantine's mother and the alleged discovery of three important Christian artifacts dating back to the crucifixion, further cementing Christianity and its joining the Jewish legacy of the city of Jerusalem, a city already profoundly connected to many people of the region. Through history, ancestry and war.
Over the next three hundred years, Jerusalem will find itself and its population under attack, with Jewish people being exiled a number of times, only to return stronger again. New Christian churches were born. The city would be attacked a handful of times, and finally in the 6th century AD, the city would find itself under siege yet again, this time by the Sassanid Empire, who would wrest control of Jerusalem from the Byzantines and sew the seeds of Jerusalem's connection to both Muhammed and Islam. Six years after the Sassanid siege of Jerusalem, Muhammed's legendary voyage to Jerusalem (
Isra and Mi'raj) takes place, beginning the Muslim Eras of Jerusalem.
The city is eventually taken by Arabian Caliph Umar the Great, and at the request of the city's Christian Patriarch, enters the city on his own two feet. The Covenant of Umar I is drawn up, and for the first time since earlier in the Roman era, religious freedom is granted to religions practiced in the city borders even while under Islamic rule. The Jewish people are able to live and worship freely for the first time since being ejected during the late Roman era and the
Dome Of The Rock is built in six ninety-one (691) AD by Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan.
Over the course of the next few centuries, Jerusalem would find itself in the hands of three different Caliphates, ending with the Abbasids and through centuries of regional strife and conflict as the ties to various regional religions and Churches (including the Armenian Apostilic Church, which much like the Church Of The Holy Sepulchre, are amongst the oldest Christian Churches in the region if not the entire world). This all occurred while under Muslim rule as much so as the remaining three centuries until 900 AD.
Shia Fatimids And The Great Schism
Jerusalem would fall under the control of the Ismaili Shia Fatimids, who in nine sixty-nine (969) AD, conquer the Abassid Empire, with the Shia guaranteeing the Sunni population religous freedom, but this act of good will is eventually undermined when in one thousand and nine (1009) AD, Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim orders the destruction of churches and synagogues throughout the empire and as a result, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is leveled, while not much later, the Dome of the Rock is expanded.
Thirty years later, Byzantine Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos orders the reconstruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Caliph Ma'ad al-Mustansir Billah agrees to the reconstruction and restoration of a number of Christian buildings, including the Muristan hospital, church and monastery.
The Great Schism divides the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, leaving Jerusalem in the Patriarchy of the Eastern Orthodox Church, setting the stage for the crusades in the centuries ahead.
Jerusalem changes hands between the Fatimids and the Byzantines several times until in ten ninety-eight,
Al-Afdal Shahanshah recaptures the city and the Fatimid Empire once again holds onto the city of Jerusalem.
Jerusalem And The Crusades
Those of us professionals working in the field of interdiction and counterinsurgency often refer to a term, the fog of war. In modern times, this term has taken on an entirely new meaning with the popularity of computer simulations and games. In such computer software, it indicates the level of awareness on the battlefield, with the darkest places in the fog of war indicating a complete absence of battlefield intel or awareness. The deeper into that dark one gets, the more confusing things tend to be, hence the motivating drive to create realtime awareness and to maintain one's own supply lines. Actually, intelligence and supply lines often go hand in hand. The stronger the one, the stronger the other, however the term fog of war as it arose from the events of history, has a somewhat more involved definition.
The fog of war refers to the deterioration of the objectivity of historical records and thteir accuracy, especially those which are often used to justify all aspects of conflict. An event in history becomes ever the more foggy and imperceptible the more distant from one's current location it occurred, in both time and space. Not only that, but the more that conflict becomes a part of that history, the worse the fog and hence our record and recollection.
Over the passage of the four thousand years of history I've pondered since training for this operation began a few weeks ago, the history of many people bound by culture to this region further is intricately woven into both the facts and legends of Jerusalem, and the fog of war obscures both without favour or bias, sewing the confusion even further, especially when so many people have an intense and passionate connection to the regional history.
The Canaanites. The Jebusites. The Kingdom Of Israel (under King David and King Solomon). The Egyptians. The Romans. The Assyrians. The Babylonians. The Byzantines. The Abbassids. The Fatimids. All were involved in the early history of Jerusalem as well as many more of those whose records were lost to the fog of war and history. The Crusades involved all of those same peoples from the early history of Jerusalem, while also bringing the religious dynasties that had arisen within the ranks of the most powerful nations of the world, many of those often finding themselves in the midst of adversarial competition over control of Jerusalem and the people involved and connected to this have taken very seriously from a young age, the importance of and their ties to the city.
Between all of this and we have nothing else but what we truly we believe, while in all irony it is the fog of war that obscures that upon which we base our beliefs. A mish mash of misrecollected events and facts, the truth whose rapid dissolution only stands to serve as the motivation for the next generation of fighting.
People from all sides of this conflict who've been clinging to the land of their ancestors' origins for thousands of years, though can they truly say that they are the same people, any of them?
Are they truly of like mind and principle, enough so to keep the conflict of generations fresh and paid for by the sacrifice of human lives in the name of conflict, against those whose have similar claims and absolutes, however diametrically in opposition they are from one another?
The Crusades And Beyond
The Crusades are what happened next in the case of claims over the region, as empire, religion and politics clashed for the next two hundred years, the conflict keeping the issues fresh in the minds of the people, as it also strengthened their resolve to maintain it into the future, for not only had the conflict served to shape the regional players over the course of their history, it had also come entirely to define them. Not only a way of life, but a means to identify by.
Europe and the Orient were now consumed into this history as it expanded outward to subsume the world around it. By the eighteen-hundreds, this would continue throughout the reign of the Ottoman Empire in the region until its collapse in the eighteen-hundreds, as well as bringing the Mongols within range of Jerusalem's doorstep a couple hundred years before the arrival of the industrial era. The power structure of the globe was changing as civilization was transformed by global trade and technology.
Virtue Or Vehemence?
Oil had become the new gold, and with its arrival it had become the fuel of the modern war machine, which now traversed the world on wheels, propellors and wings and was now capable of belching fire and brimstone, and each in effectively destructive measure.
Given the course over which conflict involving or motivated by Jerusalem had been fought, there were more than enough people willing to wield these new weapons in the name of that for whichever they fought, though cursed be the conflict upstaged by the weapons employed to fight for it, for in such a case it would never be long before both weapon and cause had failed and found neither support or audience in its having been so. When the weapons outshine the moral, it is a sign that the virtue of the principle of cause has been compromised. When one would gloat over the sharpness of their blade or its effectiveness to take a life, rather than heralding the worthiness of virtue for which they'd fought in the first place.
Perhaps that was one of the reasons why this conflict had been ongoing for as long as it had been. Neither side gloated their weapons' supremacy and neither side would betray the sense of virtue that motivated them. They distinguished themselves simply by the fact that they'd outlasted every other such conflict the world over, and without yielding so much as an inch of proverbial ground. This was no less the case when in 1948, the British Mandatory Palestine fell and Israel declared its independence (choosing Jerusalem as its capital), hence spurring the Arab-Israeli War followed by the Six Day War and many other conflicts until in 1993, the Oslo Accords established a peaceful framework for the future of Israel and Palestine, known as the two state solution.
Both Israel and Palestine claimed Jerusalem as their capital, while the city is inhabited by many of the descendents of the original groups that roamed the region six thousand years ago. There are a number of Synagogues, Mosques and Churches (including the Armenian Church) that are nearly as old as the city itself and despite the politics of the region and the world, these groups operate peacefully between one another.
If all is well in Jerusalem, then why the conflict?
Why am I here in Syria, camouflaged and buried in a pile of grain as I peer through the FLIR scope affixed to my SMG, keeping an eye on the five men I'm secretly here to baby-sit until they prove themselves harmless enough that I can simply destroy their new hardware installation and EXFIL?
The question inevitably comes right back again. Why are these men setting up a cruise missile installation on their grain farm from the equivalent of a mail-order DIY Home Cruise Missile Platform kit?
During our two months of prep and training for this operation and two weeks previous to the current time, we were summoned from the evening regimen in our barracks for an unscheduled briefing.
Intel that had recently been uncovered was flagged by our neighbour's IFLEX (Intelligence Filtering Language modeled Extrapolator), an intelligence search platform recently developed by the NSA, which examined the hundreds of millions of intelligence clips and bulletins that arrived per day, flagging and fowarding them to the correct department (81.2% times), based upon the context of the intel clip. The other 18.8% of the times, it would send it to the wrong recipient, who would then recycle the clip back into the pile, tagging it once before doing so. If a clip was older than a week, or if it had been tagged three times, it was then cycled into a higher priority pile until eventually it was reviewed by the correct department head, or that same department head's AI administrator.
Regardless, it was something that was keeping the pressure on the handlers and bureaucrats state side, that was acting in the interest of hunters and collectors or tactical operators like myself working in the field. The faster that such intel could be processed and put to use, the greater the successes of the intelligence community as a whole.
Within the hour after the briefing, and I was on a helicopter from LangleyAir Force Base and on my way to Ronald Reagan International Airport. During the helicopter trip I threw on a pair of orange baggage handler coveralls, a baseball cap and ear protectors and led to the area where I'd be working for the night in the cargo area. I was to work until eight in the morning sorting and loading cargo for flights departing to North Africa. During my shift I might receive a phone call with special instructions as to what to do next, though suffice it to say that it entailed my identifying a machined part that was part of a broken shipment. The parts to the Cruise Missile Launch Platform.
The other men with whom I was working on that shift were civilians, and hence I was on my own until at three in the morning I received a call:
"We're looking at three trucks dropping off tonight. 041, 962 and 379. The shipper's name is Mediterrannian Logistics Group. You'll be looking for a series of parts labeled as BEARING GASKET, BEARING HOUSING and and CRANKCASING, which could be on any one of those three trucks. Find them and bring us a copy of the bill of lading. The paperwork that they gave us is a decoy, but if you can find the three parts and all three bills of lading, we might be able to find one with the correct destination or contact mobile number. If we get that and your verification that the parts were machined from the original Vector Engine Dynamics designs, we'll be able to link this shipment to the rest of the parts before they arrive for assembly and installation, giving us enough time to certify them," the man on the other end of the line explained, stopping only once to breath as he spoke.
"I'm on it," I responded, knowing that by certify, he really meant destroy and demolish.
He hung up as did I, and I continued with my shift until the 962 truck pulled into the docking bay. We began unloading the contents, inventorying them for transfer to an air cargo container. When I came across the first of my target machine parts, I pulled it and separated it from the shipment, catching the attention of the supervisor.
"Where are you taking that?" asked the supervisor.
"Inspection. High precision engineered parts. Bearing casings bound for the region can't exceed a certain degree of quality as per ISO-492:2023, as that would make them a risk for the assembly of high grade centrifuges. Such parts destined for that part of the world have been banned by way of treaty since 2016," Stanton faced the supervisor.
"Are you a qualified inpector?" asked the supervisor.
"That's why you guys hired me from QCH: Qualified Certified Help..." Stanton smiled at him.
"They hired a temp for the inspections? I guess it must be busier than I thought... Alright. Help this one here to separate any parts he requests and lay them out on the table so he can do his duty like the rest of us. If you're good enough, there might be an opportunity for you here with us full-time..." the supervisor directed the rest of the crew working in the cargo area as they prepared the next air cargo container.
Stanton pulled a tiny toolkit from his overalls and after removing the packaging from the parts, began taking careful measurements with his instruments. After another forty-five minutes of going through the remaining parts he flagged, he had managed to accumulate a few pages full of extra information that he'd gleaned from each of the packing slips that accompanied them.
As he suspected, the parts were the very same ones from the design for the CAD/CAM version of the launch platform. The buyer had instead of machining them in their region, had contracted several North American machine printing service houses, to print the smaller more generic parts locally, where they were less likely to be recognized, rather than having them machined at the destination, which was exactly where the rest of the parts to build that particular launch platform were being printed.
Going through the packaging slips, he'd noticed that the purchaser had ordered several other parts that Stanton immediately recognized as being crucial for maintaining a good soil medium for high rotation crops such as grains.
"He's a farmer?" Stanton thought to himself.
There were no other parts on the packing list that could be used for any other purposes other than farming (or soil enrichment), and so he knew that whomever was handling these orders and deliveries was likely working the land, or in charge of a crew who worked it for him.
By the wee hours of the morning, they'd finished loading all of the air cargo containers and Stanton signed out, making his way to one of the carts, which he took to the military section of the airport. Not long afterwards and he was in another helicopter and on his way back to Langley.
He bumped into Donahue in the officer's mess and took a seat with him.
"How'd it go?" asked Donahue as he crammed a fork full of breakfast into his mouth.
"We got enough to get a destination of the final shipment, but get this. The purchaser is a farmer..." Stannton indicated to the older man of the two.
"A farmer? Where are you getting that from?" confirmed Donahue.
"One of the packing lists. In addition to having some of the Vector Engine Dynamics parts printed by a service bureau, he also ordered several detectors. Twenty pH detectors and ten chemical detectors that are commonly used to maintain a feedback loop between the application of fertilizer, and the watering cycle of plants normally grown in dry, acidic soil," Stanton explained to Donahue.
"You don't often find farmers taking part in this sort of thing. Back when I was dealing with the
Mujahideen, selling them Stingers to take down those damned Soviet Hind gunships, I used to deal with their arms merchant, who over lunch one day in the field asked me if I knew why none of their cooks ever carried arms," Donahue paused for a moment to finish chewing his mouthful before continuing.
"...and?" Stanton took a sip of his own coffee.
"He said to me... that when a man gets used to doing things a certain way... becomes comfortable with his routine, that he'll often do whatever it is he is required to do without even thinking about it. He's just so damned used to it. Comfortable with it even. If however you try to get the same man to do something he's never done, he won't be so easily accommodating. That's why you never let a cook learn to kill, and why you never let a soldier learn to cook he said to me. If you run into someone who can do both with a clear conscience, you'll never be able to enjoy another meal ever again... he said to me as we ate his cooking. Of course at that point, I looked at him and knew that he'd killed before. What he didn't tell me was that his pilot was the cook of the food we were eating. Not him. If that wasn't the case, I never would have seen it coming. From that point on, I always make sure that I know the man on my team who fires his weapons beside me, and the man on my team that cooks for me, and I always make sure they don't do both," Donahue explained to Stanton.
"Maybe this is signaling a new dynamic in this conflict? The dissolution of social neutrality. Playing it safe. The status quot," Stanton said.
"When people who did not get involved in the fighting suddenly start getting involved in the fighting, that's a sign of something..." Donahue scraped the last of his food with his fork.
"I'll bring it up in the debriefing. It might pay for us to look into this on-site, if that turns out to be our operational deployment in two weeks," Stanton finished his coffee.
"If they haven't fired the damned munitions already by that time..." Donahue said to Stanton as he departed for the CO's office.
Stanton thought carefully about Donahue's words from that morning as he remained still and camouflaged in the pile of grain, carefully keeping an eye on the five men working to finish arming the munitions.
Stanton observed that the man who was running the show, that is, the man with the phone, he hadn't helped to assemble or arm any of the hardware they'd been installing that night. He was still very much the farmer that had never killed.
"You do realize that their lives are all in the hands of the electrician who installs the industrial service upgrade, don't you?" asked Donahue through his headset, referring to the men installing the launch platform and arming the missiles.
"And the lives of those innocent people at Ben Gurion International Airport... the people we're here to protect!" Dina interjected over her headset.
"If anyone makes a move to upgrade the electrical service... We'll signal for our second extraction option. We'll pick our targets, and I'll give the go code," Stanton said as they watched the men finish arming the last missile.
The Morning Light
The sun's distant glow had just crested the eastern skyline, the lights of Busra and Al Kabr now dim by contrast. The morning sound of Namaqua doves could be heard as they searched the soil surrounding acacia bushes for their breakfast in the form of the regional invertebrates.
Tech Head had just used the crank to lower the final missile into the magazine chamber of the launch platform, after which he stood and dusted off his pants and wiped the sweat from his brow. By that time, Phone Man came out of the house and went to each of the three silos and inspected their work.
Lefty, Trim Beard and Sidekick by that time had retrieved bottled water from their kit on the back of the truck and began guzzling it in the rising heat.
[It seems that you have done well in your task.]
"يبدو أنك قمت بعمل جيد في مهمتك." Phone Man addressed his peers.
[Did you doubt us?]
"هل شككت بنا؟" Lefty said after having finished his bottle of water.
[It is not so much doubt, as it is being unsure of a very complicated task. Regardless, it is done.]
[It is not so much doubt, as it is being unsure of a very complicated task. Regardless, it is done.]
"ليس الأمر شكًا بقدر ما هو عدم يقين بشأن مهمة بالغة التعقيد. على أي حال، تم إنجازها."
A silence settled over the men as they pondered what was soon to follow.
Stanton felt his temperature rising from beneath the grain. His scope was still centered on Phone Man.
[Are we not arming the platforms today?]
"هل نحن لا نقوم بتسليح المنصات اليوم؟" asked Sidekick.
Tech Head looked to Phone Man.
[I think that what he is saying is that its time for us to leave.]
"أعتقد أن ما يقوله هو أنه حان الوقت لنا للرحيل" Lefty pointed to the cab of the truck, directing his two assistants to the cab.
[You'll need your day's rest for the celebrations tonight.]
"سوف تحتاج إلى الراحة للاحتفالات الليلة." Phone Man said to Sidekick without looking him in the eye.
"Did you get their conversation? - over," Donahue asked Stanton.
"They're saying their goodbyes but I can't quite make it out. Must have some dirt in the condensor mic - over," Stanton responded.
By that point, Lefty, Trim Beard and Sidekick had made their way to the cab as Phone Man and Tech Head watched. They started the truck and drove it down the length of the dirt road back towards the asphalt and Busra.
Stanton let out a slow breath as he followed the two men as they walked towards what appeared to be an industrial service panel affixed to one of the buildings connected to the grain silo.
"What's going on? - over," Donahue kept both men in his sights.
Stanton spoke as he watched the situation unfold.
"Order extraction Alfa Sierra Echo. Tagging Phone Man. Go code on three... two... one... Romeo Foxtrot..." Stanton gave the order as he watched Phone Man walking behind Tech Head.
Phone Man reached into his trousers and withdrew a handgun. An old Makarov from what Stanton could recognize of it. He aimed the gun at Tech Head who suddenly turned around and began backing away from Phone Man.
"Hold your fire! I'll do this!" Stanton ordered as he rolled to the right, revealing himself from the pile of grain and sliding down until his boots hit the dirt.
He then began running at Phone Man, realizing what had just happened.
Phone Man held the gun at Tech Head.
[Get onto your knees! Put your hands behind your head!]
"انزل على ركبتيك! ضع يديك خلف رأسك!" Phone Man ordered Tech Head as Stanton arrived, his MP5 leveled on both men though keeping Tech Head in his sights.
[Are you out of your mind? They'll kill you for this! They'll kill your family! They'll kill everyone you know and love!]
"هل جننت؟ سيقتلونك لهذا السبب! سيقتلون عائلتك! سيقتلون كل من تعرفه وتحبه" Tech Head screamed at Phone Man.
[Quiet! Just... don't make this so hard brother!]
"اهدأ! فقط... لا تُصعّب الأمر يا أخي!" Phone Man was struggling against the resistance of the trigger and the weight he knew it would put upon his soul.
[Lower the gun! Do it!]
"اخفض المسدس! افعلها!" Stanton ordered Phone Man, who looked to Stanton momentarily and then back to Tech Head.
"If you're taking them both, you've got another five minutes to make it to EXFIL site Alfa Sierra Echo! over," Linda reminded Stanton.
[Drop the gun! Now!]
"أسقط السلاح الآن!" Stanton ordered Phone Man, this time raising his voice considerably.
[Do you know what these men were going to make me do?]
"هل تعلم ماذا كان هؤلاء الرجال سيجعلونني أفعل؟" Phone Man spoke nervously as the morning heat drew beads of sweat from his forehead.
[Nobody can make you do anything that you don't want to. You might not always have the gun, but you always have the choice!]
"لا أحد يستطيع إجبارك على فعل ما لا تريده. قد لا تملك السلاح دائمًا، لكن لديك دائمًا الخيار!" Stanton yelled back.
[If I let him go... he'll tell them everything... and they'll kill us all!]
"إذا سمحت له بالذهاب... سيخبرهم بكل شيء... وسيقتلوننا جميعًا!" Phone Man's hands began to to shake, the gun's handgrip becoming slippery with sweat as he tightened his fingers around it.
[If you kill him, we might lose the opportunity to stop all of this before it starts.]
"إذا قتلته، فقد نفقد فرصة إيقاف كل هذا قبل أن يبدأ." Stanton lowered his voice.
"You've got four minutes thirty seconds ETA - over!" Linda informed Stanton.
[Look, I can clearly see that you've never done this before. You don't want to start now. Lower the gun and I'll take the both of you and get your family to safety, but you have to lower your gun and surrender yourself immediately. You've got thirty seconds until someone else makes that decision for you.]
"انظر، أرى بوضوح أنك لم تفعل هذا من قبل. لا تريد أن تبدأ الآن. أنزل سلاحك وسأأخذكما معًا وأُنقذ عائلتك، لكن عليك أن تنزل سلاحك وتُسلم نفسك فورًا. أمامك ثلاثون ثانية حتى يتخذ شخص آخر هذا القرار نيابةً عنك." Stanton reasoned with him, slowly getting a little closer.
[Fifteen seconds. Ten seconds. Five.]
"خمسة عشر ثانية. عشرة. خمسة." Stanton counted down.
Phone Man slowly lowered the Makarov and Stanton quickly moved in, retrieving the Makarov from Phone Man, keeping both of his prisoners on one side, and both in full view of his sniper support.
"Keep an eye on them while I bag 'em - over," Stanton slung his MP5 and retrieved a pair of hand ties from his kit, which he used to bind his prisoners.
He then retrieved a pair of hoods and tied them over the head of his prisoners.
"Get down here and begin leading these men to the EXFIL point, over," Stanton requested of Donahue.
[Its not armed. The launch platform.]
"منصة الإطلاق غير مُسلّحة." Phone Man informed Stanton.
[I know. Your friend here was going to upgrade the electrical service. Now just stay quiet and in place or its game over.]
"أعلم. كان صديقك هنا بصدد تحديث خدمة الكهرباء. الآن، ابقَ هادئًا وحافظ على مكانك وإلا ستنتهي اللعبة." Stanton forced both men down onto the ground face first as he waited for Donahue to get to his position.
Thirty seconds later and Donahue arrived, slightly out of breath.
"I've got them. Get to it. Don't want to miss our ride," Donahue ordered Stanton.
"I'm on it," Stanton immediately ran to the first assembled launch platform and pulled the first of three prepared demolition kits from his webbing.
He affixed the Semtex and detonator to the first platform, setting the timer for three minutes before moving on to the next launch platform. By that time, Donahue had both of his prisoners up and on their feet and was marching them quickly south east.
Stanton sprinted to the next platform, having the demolition charge set in a mere twenty seconds before moving on to the last.
When he arrived at the last platform, the relative silence of the farming valley was broken by the sound of bomb sirens.
"What the...? What's going on? Did you guys schedule something you didn't tell me about? over," Stanton asked Donahue.
"No heavy ordnance drop to accompany our operation that I'm aware of... over," Donahue replied.
"Third charge in place. I'm catching up with you now..." Stanton said as he got the third charge in place and began running in the direction of Donahue and their two prisoners.
A hundred a fifty meters south of their position, a helicopter appeared as it sped towards the EXFIL site. The bomb raid klaxons blared as a sextet of missiles in flight suddenly flew over their position, low altitude.
"We've got birds in the air! Six of them! Where the...! You mean we didn't get them all...?!!!" Stanton continued running as six cruise missiles flew over on a south bound trajectory on their way to Tel Aviv.
The distinct trails of the cruise missiles etched a line just twenty meters above the land as they flew avoiding radar on their approach to their target.
Donahue by that time had dropped a pair of flares as the chopper closed on its landing AO and by that point, the missiles had closed the distance between the farm and Tel Aviv by a hundred and twenty kilometers.
In the distance, a number of plumes had emerged from the region of Tel Aviv as the Iron Dome launched a sortie of eighteen interceptors. Anti-ballistic missiles designed to track and bring down any air threat to their air space.
By that point, the helicopter had landed for their exfiltration and Donahue loaded his prisoners into the chopper. Stanton caught up with them thirty seconds later and was on board. The helicopter took off and began in the direction of Tel Aviv.
"They're hypersonic... They're going to be there any minute..." Stanton told Donahue.
"Let's hope their air defense platform is up to the task..." Donahue responded.
"I don't think that you understand. If even just one of those birds hits its target, there's a good chance that a number of cities in this region will be slagged by tonight!" Stanton said to Donahue as he clipped himself to the chassis of the helicopter.
As the Iron Dome ABMs rocketed towards their interception targets, the C-RAM towers on the outskirts suddenly came to life. Their motors whirred as the towers spun so that their barrels were facing where the missiles would be in three seconds. There was a short moment of silence as six of the C-RAM towers began firing, a stream of glowing hot rounds and tracers pierced the sky. Two of the cruise missiles were immediately incapacitated, the other four managing to employ its avoidance systems to steer clear of the C-RAM trajectories.
One of the ABMs impacted a third cruise missile, leaving three remaining. They immediately deployed chaff and IR countermeasures, luring several of the ABMs towards decoys as another cruise missile was hit by a C-RAM. The two remaining cruise missiles split up, each apparently setting themselves up for their detonation oritentation and altitude. The missiles began to climb as another trio of ABMs crashed into the fifth missile, leaving only one.
Its trajectory arced, taking it much higher up into the air until it had reached fifteen hundred meters above Ben Gurion Air Port. Another burst from a C-RAM miraculously clipped the missile, whose thrusters fired once again, its steering surfaces damaged by the C-RAM.
The missile flew off in the direction of the Red Sea, quickly covering fifty kilometers out into its waters when time suddenly stood still.
For the first time since World War II, a nuclear munition had been detonated.
Both Stanton and Donahue looked away from the initial blast, as sirens and alarms in the helicopter suddenly started sounding.
"Buckle up! We're going to make an emergency landing!" the pilot addressed them over their headsets.
"EMP!" Stanton responded to Donahue, who looked out at the mushroom cloud slowly taking form over the Red Sea.
The helicopter's timing circuits were fried, as were most of its flight systems as it rapidly descended into the desert sand. Stanton clasped the seat handle as the helicopter impacted the ground, sliding several meters forward and then spinning sideways over to its side, the propellors immediately exploding into debris as dust as smoke filled the cabin.
Stanton shook his head as he struggled to free himself from his seat. The sounds of electronic alarms and component sirens filled the air, the enormous mushroom cloud over the Red Sea peeking in from the smoke. Even at that distance it was a giagantic glowing monstrosity.
Stanton fell from his seat, and began helping Donahue with his. After the two of them were freed, they went for the pilot, but after finding that he'd been impaled by a portion of the helicopter blade and had no breath or pulse, they instead took his tags and left him.
They found their prisoners, one of them still strapped in, while the other had somehow fallen from the helicopter before it impacted and had broken his ribs.
"We're going to have to blow the chopper. We'll try to extract by foot. Should take us a day to reach Tel Aviv from here if we can steal a vehicle... or a camel..." Donahue told Stanton.
"This is a day I'd never hoped I'd see..." Dina addressed them over the radio.
"Did it hit its target?" asked Stanton.
"We're still assessing..." Dina replied.
"We just received word from SAC NORAD*** that the bird detonated over the Red Sea. About seventy klicks west of Tel Aviv. Well outside of its lethal zone..." Linda reported to them.
"So is somebody going to tell us what happened?" Stanton asked them.
"Lets stay focused on our operation..." Donahue began.
"There were two operations obviously... care to explain?!!!" said to Donahue out of ear shot of their prisoners.
"This is a complicated situation. We need to focus on making it to Tel Aviv," Donhaue reminded Stanton as they gathered whatever kit they could from the wrecked chopper.
"You knew about this, didn't you?" Stanton scolded Donahue as he went through and pocketed all of the medical supplies.
"Lets just deal with the situation, and talk about this after..." Donahue said, grabbing the remainder of ammunition and their survival packs.
The two of them gathered their supplies, tending to Tech Head (whose ribs were broken) and preparing themselves for the journey to Tel Aviv.
"They're going to be hunting you..." Tech Head informed them in broken English.
"They're going to be hunting you too. You'd better not slow us down so that they don't catch up with us. If they do get us, they'll torture me and my friend here to find out everything we know, after which they'll torture and kill the both of you, so there's no loose ends. Your lives depend upon us now," Donahue responded.
"Lies! They will revel at me for my heroics and should I die, they will praise me as a martyr while they behead this traitorous wretch!" Tech Head practically frothed at the mouth in response.
"No they won't. They'll treat you like heroes and allies while they torture us, and when they're done they'll turn on and torture you, probably gut you and leave you to rot here in the desert..." Donahue spat at Tech Head.
"Wait a second. What did you mean by that? About you having to call someone?" asked Stanton of Tech Head.
"I was supposed to phone the purchaser of the launch platform. Let him know that the facility was online, but my traitorous friend here it seems had other plans..." Tech Head explained.
"When you found us, I was going to kill this man, sabotage the launcher and then take my family and flee to another country... but as you said... killing isn't something that comes easily to someone who's never done it..." Tech Head explained to Stanton.
"Killing isn't easy, period, but you made the right choice in the end on both counts. With the launcher first, and then with your own gun. You were secretly trying to undermine the whole thing from the get go, even knowing that it was a risk to you and your family," Stanton explained to Phone Man that he understood the situation entirely.
"I was supposed to call and let our people know that everything had gone according to plan, but I didn't and that is likely why the missiles from the second site were fired prematurely..." Tech Head told them.
"Don't gloat over it. Your missiles missed their targets, and the one that detonated didn't kill anyone..." Stanton told Tech Head.
"Yes... but you're still in Syria, and the people who put us up to this will be coming very soon to hunt for you... not to mention that by this time tomorrow, the entire region might be one big heap of radioactive slag..." Tech Head said to Stanton coldly.
Stanton looked to Donahue, who in turn quickly looked away.
"Get them ready. We'll be leaving as soon as I demo the chopper. We don't want his friends shooting at us with any of your repurposed hardware here..." this time Stanton ordered Donahue as he walked back to the chopper and began wiring it with the remainder of their demolitions kit.
A few minutes later and they were walking a quick pace in the direction of Tel Aviv, their two prisoners ahead of them as they kept watch over them from behind. In the distance, the vestiges of the mushroom cloud spread across the sky as a darkness enveloped the region.
Unfolded Or Unhinged?
"...our first order of the day is to remind everyone to remain calm and remind you that your peers in the press are all going to be trying to get their questions in as well. We have a limited amount of time and so we'd like you to respect our itinerary here and keep all questions and other interruptions to yourself until the question and answer period, which will last for two minutes at the end of this press conference. As you can probably see, we're all very busy here in dealing with this situation as it stands. Miraculously thus far, the casualties incurred by the events that unfolded thirty five minutes ago have been minimal, though we are deeply saddened by any loss of life or injuries incurred as a result of the situation and will tolerate no threat against our armed forces and civilians world wide," Anthony Gerrick addressed a room full of press, who essentially filled the room, including the standing room only at the back.
He was bracketed on either side by a General, and on the other side an Admiral, both of the chiefs thereof NATO operations globally.
Anthony paused only long enough to take a sip of his water before resuming his brief.
"The President of the United States of America only ten minutes ago finished a direct call with the Kremlin, and both leaders have given assurances that no nuclear armaments will be deployed except in the event of incurred forceful deterrence where required. We've received similar assurances from China, India, Pakistan and North Korea, and have given similar assurances whose authority originates from the NATO Commander-in-Chief of Global Operations, meaning there will be no deployment of nuclear capable forces from our centers throughout Europe and the Middle East in the event that our forces and civilians globally are not put under similar threat," he paused again, looking around the room to ensure the audience that everything was under control.
"We have received assurances of support both from Saudi Arabia and Jordan, both of whom are standing by with emergency and medical forces to lend any assistance needed in the area affected. The entirety of Israel is currently under martial law, including the Gaza strip and their forces are on high alert. We cannot comment as to whether that includes any nuclear capable forces or deterrent other than the Iron Dome, which thankfully was fully operation as the events of the earlier incident began forty to forty-five minutes ago," Anthony paused again.
"With regard to outlining our current activities in the region, Vice-Admiral Matthius Hendrik will bring you up to date regarding both our air and naval operations," Anthony stepped aside and a tall man with stern chiseled facial features took the podium.
"Thank you Anthony. First and foremost, and I believe that General Oliver Ribeiro can confirm this information and that is that all of our forces in the affected regions have reported in, and that despite some of the damage to equipment you might have heard from other sources, there have been no serious injuries to NATO personnel or the participating armed forces of our member states. We will talk about the nature of the damage to the equipment, and what is the source of all the casualties experienced in the region as a result of the incident shortly," Vice-Admiral Hendrik addressed the press.
"About twenty-five minutes ago, when our situational awareness was fully assessed given the inicident, a Naval Task Force was assigned to the region, including two Special Operations units, which will be proceeding to the Red Sea a relatively short distance from their assembly point at an undisclosed location in the Mediterrannian. We will be focusing on assisting the affected areas with emergency and military assistance, while our intelligence efforts will focus on an investigation. As far as the ground and airborne troops being deployed to the region goes, I'll let General Ribeiro bring you up to date on that situation. General?" Vice-Admiral Hendrik explained to the press and then stepped aside for the General.
"Thank you Vice-Admiral Hendrik. As you already are aware, our member states have been maintaining a sizeable and actionable force of ground troops in the region from bases in Qatar, from where we'll be deploying a force of between twenty to fifty thousand troops, keeping in mind that those numbers are likely to change as required and as diplomacy permits. We urge you not to be alarmed by this deployment, as we've had similarly large and even larger deployments occur in recent history, and those occurred in the absence of an emergency of this nature. The troops' role will include emergency assistance to the population of Tel Aviv and other affected areas. Anthony?" General Ribeiro stepped aside and Anthony once again took the podium.
"Thank you General Ribeiro. Now we'd like to address the nature of the incident and the damage insofar as we understand it at this point, with the latest intelligence..." Anthony paused as a new intelligence brief appeared on the tablet screen before him on the podium.
"...as you can see we're receiving updates quite frequently so just allow me to... Alright. At approximately 05:45 in the morning Tel Aviv time, defense nodes of the Iron Dome situated in northern Tel Aviv intercepted a number of unidentified aerial threats which made an incursion into Israeli airspace. Thirty-six seconds later, several C-RAM towers and ABM launch platforms were activated and fired salvos at the inbound threats, bringing five of them down. A sixth aerial threat was detected on a flight trajectory that took it approximately five thousand meters above the Red Sea, about seventy to ninety kilometers from the Tel Aviv shoreline. Upon achieving that distance, the threat detonated, producing the signature mushroom cloud that has since become viral on the internet, having been recorded on some half a million mobile phones by personnel in the region according to our latest estimates," Anthony paused to take a drink of water as the chatter in the room began to rise.
"A lot of residents of Alexandria managed to catch the incident on their phones, while there were no videos of the same scene taken from Tel Aviv or Jerusalem and the reason for that is because of a side effect of the deployment of certain munitions, that can be potentially destructive and damaging to modern electronic equipment, unless it has been protected against such vulnerability. This effect is known as Electromagnetic Pulse, or EMP. Most unprotected electronics within three hundred and fifty kilometers of ground zero would have been rendered useless or bricked as our kids would say nowadays. Thankfully, Israel's infrastructure is largely safeguarded against such risks, which is why most of their communications were operational and they were able to dispatch emergency services to deal with situations where disabled equipment resulted in damage and injury. A number of flights small craft flights were affected, but thankfully there were no international airbus flights in the air when the incident occurred. Most of the casualties then are from small aircraft whose flight systems were disabled and destroyed, and the debris wreckage falling from the sky, including the aerial threats that were shot down over Tel Aviv," Anthony explained to the press.
"We have about two minutes for questions...?" Anthony picked one of the journalists.
"You've made no mention of nuclear weapons..." the reporter began.
"...I in fact did make mention of nuclear armaments regarding our deterrence..." Anthony corrected the reporter.
"...but you didn't mention that the incident employed the use of a nuclear weapon, and yet you just explained that one of the side effects of the attack involved EMP, which from my understanding can only originate from nuclear weapons..." the reporter pushed his question.
"...again... no. EMP can originate from several other naturally occurring phenomenon..." it was clear that Anthony was firmly holding onto control of the situation.
"...was the aerial threat that detonated above the Red Sea a nuclear weapon?" asked the reporter.
"At this point we aren't at liberty to say. There are a number of conventional munitions that are capable of producing as large a cloud, and given the current lack of details we're not at liberty to say. Next question?" Anthony turned to another reporter.
"During the detonation of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hundreds of thousands of cases of severe burns and blindness were reported. Are you expecting similar casualities once the dust has settled from this incident?" asked the reporter.
"At this point I can't comment on those numbers and given the fact that the bombs detonated at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were definitely nuclear weapons, and that we're still determining the nature of munitions detonated above the Red Sea, you'll have to wait a few hours until we're able to make that determination and make it publicly available. Next?" Anthony chose another reporter.
"At this point do you have any idea of from where this attack originated?" asked the reporter.
"The aerial threats I described earlier originated from north east of Tel Aviv, but at this point we have no real data as to from where they were deployed. Last question?" Anthony picked his final reporter.
"Do you have any Special Operations units operating in the area of the incident, or near the possible locations from which these weapons were deployed?" asked the reporter.
"No. Currently, there are no Special Operations or forces operating in those particular regions and as such, our ground intelligence about this incident as it currently stands, is very scarce. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much," Anthony, General Ribeiro and Vice-Admiral Hendrik left the press room as chaos broke out.
...
Tricia pulled the car into a parking spot and got out of the driver's side door. Halmand caught up with her as they approached the front entry way to Vector Engine Dynamics. A number of Tactical Operations vans were already situated in the parking lot, while many of the Tac-Ops officers were outside of the building.
"A bit of overkill on this one Inspector..." a Staff Sergeant addressed her as she passed.
"Its going to be like this for a while..." Halmand said to the Sergeant.
"Yeah, but sending in three full blown Tac-Ops squads to take down an office full of suits armed with tablets and slide-rules?" the Staff Sergeant responded.
"You saw the news. We're the hard side now. We have to be, unless you want to see the same thing on the news every morning..." Tricia pushed the door open and stepped into the office, Halmand trailing behind her.
"Come on Trish. The poor guy probably feels like a heel, having to breach and infiltrate an office like this?" Halmand tried to calm her down as they kept walking.
"Are you saying that we should tell him that the evidence we're collecting might be used in a case against the builders of the nuclear weapon detonated in the Red Sea just so he can sleep at night about having the shove a nine millimeter in the face of a quiet man in an Armani suit?" Tricia asked him rhetorically.
"What? You mean that Vector Engine Dynamics shark guy wasn't here? That guy could definitely dress down a few of our Tac-Ops guys in about three words. Give the poor Sergeant a break. He spends years being liked by most people, now because of this incident and enormous case, he's going to spend the next ten years being hated by everyone for having to put on the buff and rough," Halmand responded.
"Don't you see? Every arrest we do is going to be like this for the next year or so. I'm just trying to help him keep it together and keep it professional. I've seen too many good officers end up borderline and in the depression house by not properly managing their mind set and attitude. No matter the situation, we all still have a job to do," Halmand immediately recognized Trish's statements as being how she dealt with stress and admired for it.
"Why are we even here? We could be back at the office going over the details and strengthening our case because you know as well as I do that when word of this case gets around, there's going to be a lot of heat. From both upper management and the press. Trish, as good a partner as you are, I just think that this is a waste of time..." Halmand said as they turned into the corner office.
"You must be Inspector Camden?" asked a man with a thick moustache and a pair of work coveralls who happened to look like he'd just stepped out of a Nintendo game.
"That I am. You must Andrej Bognan?" Trish responded, extending her hand.
"You got that much information out of me on your first day? You'll be an expert safecracker in no time..." Andrej replied.
"So, do you think you can get into this one before their lawyers show up?" asked Trish.
"I don't know. How long do we got?" asked Andrej.
"About two hours..." Halmand responded.
Tricia looked at Halmand and smirked.
"Try three. If they show up before then, we'll keep them at bay," Tricia assured him.
"These are tough ones. I've only done four or five of these, and they've always taken me at least four hours," Andrej opened the closet door and shoved the hanging shirts and coats aside, revealing a large steel and concrete safe with a very intimidating dial.
"You've got three, and if you get it in three, I'll pay you double what you're asking," Tricia assured him.
"If you agree to the minimum, even if I don't get it in time or get it at all, we've got a deal," Andrej negotiated.
"You're on..." Tricia pulled out a business card and wrote down something on the back.
She then handed it to Andrej, who examined it.
"Whaaa? Is this a joke or something?" Andrej started laughing.
"You've got an en suite bathroom in case you need it. There's a bar fridge and I'll bet you there's lunch in it if you take a look. Lock the office door and don't open it unless someone gives you those code words and in that order. Got it?" confirmed Tricia.
"Alright, but I'm going to need a pot of coffee to keep me going," Andrej explained to her.
Tricia walked over to a nearby credenza and grabbed a coffee pot and the filter from the coffee maker situated on it.
"Here. Go clean this and make the man a pot of coffee," Tricia handed both to Halmand.
"Inspector Tim Horton here. Will that be medium or dark roast?" Halmand said as he wandered off.
To be continued...
* AO - Area of operation
** SMG - Submachine gun.
*** SAC NORAD - Strategic Air Command North American Air Defense (Mount Cheyenne, Colorado, United States Of America)
Special thanks to Wikipedia who have been a great source of research for this story.
Credits and attribution:
Tools: Daz3D, Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop, Lightwave 3D, Blender, Stable Diffusion (Easy Diffusion distribution), InstantID, Sadtalker, Google Colaboratory, Microsoft Copilot (Windows 11), Hitfilm, Borderline Obsession...
Invideo.IO which was used to produce the ENERTRINSIC INTERNATIONAL INVESTOR PRESENTATION.
Rutherford model representation of Deuterium and Tritium: By Dirk Hünniger; Derivative work in english - Balajijagadesh.
InstantID by: Wang, Qixun and Bai, Xu and Wang, Haofan and Qin, Zekui and Chen, Anthony. Research Paper Title: InstantID - Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Seconds.
Sadtalker by: Zhang, Wenxuan and Cun, Xiaodong and Wang, Xuan and Zhang, Yong and Shen, Xi and Guo, Yu and Shan, Ying and Wang, Fei.
Research Paper Title: SadTalker: Learning Realistic 3D Motion Coefficients for Stylized Audio-Driven Single Image Talking Face Animation.
Gratitude: Our Mentors, Senseis, Sifus, Sebomnims, lifetime inspirations, family, friends, the Nomads (ask Stanton about that one), the Music, the Movies, the Theatre, the Arts, ASMR, (both YouTube and Bilibili and the many other creators on those platforms), the Gaming and Developer communities and of course, the audience.
Martial Arts (in the words of real experts and at least one comedian): https://brucelee.com (home of the real Dragon and an entire family of inspirations), http://iwco.online International Wing Chun Organization (International presence of a very scalable intensity martial art, protected and developed by Shaolin Nun Ng Mui) and the alma mater of Jinn Hua's own specialized variation thereof, https://iogkf.com International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karatedo Federation (even Hanshi had his teachers), https://itftkd.sport International Taekwondo Federation (Here there be Taegers), https://tangsoodoworld.com Tang Soo Do World (the path of Grandmaster Chuck Norris), https://www.aikido-international.org International Aikido Federation (how else would Navy Chef Steven Seagal liberate a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier from a team of hijackers?), https://www.stqitoronto.com Shaolin Temple Quanfa Institute (The City Of Toronto's own Shaolin Temple), https://www.enterthedojoshow.com Master Ken's Ameri-Te-Do presence (If we can't laugh at ourselves, then we can at least laugh the loudest at others, and other Zen)
Jesse Enkamp: Karate Nerd
Sensei Rokas: Martial Arts Journey
Iaido: Train For Katana Mastery Like Samurai
Special thanks to Aitrepreneur, Mickmumpitz, Hugging Face and the YouTube educational content producers, including those catering to the AI content production pipeline and of course AlphaSignal.
Something to give you perspective: The very first teacher had no formal education, didn't graduate and was self taught, but only because they had no other choice. We do.
Very Special Thanks to our Armed Forces and Federal and Provincial Police Services, who really do Stand On Guard, especially when it comes to the Charter of Rights And Freedoms and the Human Rights Act, and often without being self righteous zealots secretly protecting religious law. True keepers of the peace.
This content is entirely produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701 under the Shhhh! Digital Media banner.
