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  The security guards saluted Colonel Walid. They reached down and pulled Colonel Alqahiray up from the floor. They lifted the hero of the republic between them.

  “Colonel,” Walid said, touching the founding father affectionately on the good shoulder. “It has been a pleasure to serve with you. The republic owes you its birth.” Walid turned to the audience. “Three cheers for Colonel Alqahiray.”

  Walid whispered in the colonel’s ear, “Go with Allah, sir.”

  The security guards carried the wounded colonel out of the room to enthusiastic cheers led by Colonel Walid.

  “Samir, call me when you arrive at the villa,” said Walid. “I will call Mintab and tell him that event alpha has been accepted. This afternoon we will release the first of the press releases attributed to Colonel Alqahiray. Little does he know how famous we intend to make him.”

  Then Walid added as Samir reached the door, “Samir, be careful. He is still dangerous, but don’t do anything foolish. Okay? He is more valuable alive right now.”

  Samir nodded as he departed, hurrying to catch up with the security force he had personally selected.

  “So, general xing, what do you think?” dao asked as the operator muted the sound on the screen. The crowd on the floor of the United Nations milled about in discussion.

  “I think, Mr. Chairman, that Ambassador Mintab said the right words to appease the West and encourage the East. Whether he meant them remains to be seen.”

  “You are right, General. Words are what the West want. Seldom do they weigh the actions that back them. But what do we care as long as the Arabs remember who supported them in their genesis endeavor. The People’s Republic is the first to recognize the new power in the Mediterranean. They will remember that, and we will ensure that they do. With this new power, our influence will wield an economic might that the world has not seen since the Ming Dynasty.”

  Dao’s wrinkled face broke into a thin smile. “Sixty-five percent of America’s trade is with Europe, the majority of which goes through the Mediterranean. But America fails to learn from history. Unlike us, in the East, who study and learn from the ways of our ancestors.” He laughed. “You know what will happen? America will divert even more of its trade to us.”

  The laughter turned to coughs and the coughs to a racking fit. His lips turned blue from the exertion before the attack eased and his breath returned to normal. No one moved to help him.

  Several minutes passed before he continued. “The Islamic Republic possesses more economic potential than any two countries in the Western alliances, with the exception of the United States and Germany. Of course, it will be the Islamic Republic’s challenge to develop that potential. We will benefit while this happens, and we will be careful that they do not turn and bite their masters.” He pensively tapped his lips with his forefinger. “No, we must ensure that this new potential is never directed against the People’s Republic.

  “The other issue is control of the Mediterranean Sea. When you control the Mediterranean, you control the West. I sometimes wonder if America knows this. Eventually, we can expect them to try to wrest back that control. Separately, those Arab countries have little influence in the Mediterranean, not even sufficient to control events along their own coasts. In the past few minutes, that whole picture has changed.

  History has shown that the country that controls the Mediterranean wields exponential world influence and power. When the Americans drew back to their own shores at the turn of this century, they left a vacuum in the Mediterranean. So goes the control of the Mediterranean, so goes world influence, and I state here that influence will go to the new republic and that we, the People’s Republic, will enjoy the fruits of their labor. We showed the new nation that you don’t need a strong military to control a sea. All you need are mines, stealth, information technology, and the balls to do it.” He reached under the table and weakly grabbed his crotch.

  Everyone clapped as the chairman finished. Just as the chairman appeared to be dozing off, he raised his head and added, “The Americans are checkmated and don’t even know it. They have no reason to go after the Libyans, because the country that attacked them no longer exists.

  Those responsible for the attacks have been executed; at least, the ones the Americans believe ordered the attacks are dead. And finally, the American citizens in Algiers are being evacuated. When that is finished, they will have no reason for military action, and only military action can stop this new country from rising like a phoenix from the ashes of Arab history. No, the West will pontificate — talk — wring their hands in an attempt to try to stop it, but they will keep their military caged.”

  He leaned forward. “We will obtain significant prestige in the eyes of the world as Korea stands down. At the end of the day on the world stage, we will be the winners.”

  The chairman turned to the four stewards who stood at attention near the cart. “Please,” he said to them, waving his hand at the members around the table.

  The stewards hurried to break out the French wine, providing each member with his own bottle.

  The general forced himself to look pleased. He hated the drinking binges the chairman enjoyed, but when the chairman drank, everyone drank. And when the chairman eventually napped, everyone waited.

  The door opened. A colonel flanked by two soldiers entered.

  The chairman raised his eyebrows at the intrusion, his aged lips pressed thinly together. Patience was not a virtue that ripened with old age and power. His bodyguards placed their hands on the weapons beneath their coats.

  The colonel bowed to the chairman. “My apologies, Mr. Chairman. It is urgent that I speak to the general.”

  The chairman reluctantly gave a curt nod.

  General Xing rose and walked to the door, where the taller colonel bent down to whisper in the general’s ear. Their muted conversation took several minutes. Minutes in which the chairman waited impatiently for the intruders to depart so the celebration could start. General Xing gave the colonel his orders and dismissed him. Sweat broke out on the general’s forehead. After several nods from the colonel to ensure he understood his directions, General Xing marched to where the chairman sat. The door shut behind the messenger.

  “Mr. Chairman, I have grave news to report and then I must leave,” he said, his face pale.

  “What is it?” Dao asked impatiently. He knew the general never enjoyed his celebrations, but had never expected him to employ a ruse to avoid one.

  General Xing took a deep breath. “Mr. Chairman, the North Koreans have refused to stand down. In fact, about thirty minutes ago, they crossed the border at three different points. They are about five miles into South Korean territory.” He paused, his face growing whiter. “And, sir, they have overrun the American positions. There have been heavy American casualties.” He bowed his head.

  The chairman’s reaction belied his frail health. He stood and slapped the general. “You said they were drawing back! You said that they would-demobilize! You said that they would do all of this for food!

  For food, damn you! Why didn’t the Americans stop them? Where were the South Korean allies? You have failed China, General!” His eyes blazed with anger. Even with bad arteries, both of the chairman’s cheeks turned red.

  General Xing stood with his head bowed, fury boiling inside over the public humiliation under the hands of this pompous and senile old man.

  “Request to be excused, Mr. Chairman, to try to turn them back before it is too late?” General Xing asked in a whisper.

  “Too late! You don’t know the Americans, General Xing,” the chairman said sarcastically. “What is winging its way east is a wave of fury that will wash over the American public like a monsoon storm. A tidal wave of hate and determination will erupt. They will rise to the attack as they have always risen through history. They may never pay attention to the lessons that history offers, but one thing that history shows is that if you provoke the Americans’ are, they fight to win.”

 
; The chairman sat back down, and one of his guards helped him place another nitroglycerin tablet under his tongue. “You have little time to convince your ‘lackeys’ in Korea to return to the border before the Americans bring every facet of their economic and military might against this unprovoked attack. When that happens, China will be in an untenable situation. Stupid! Why make war when patience, economic moves, and political power can achieve world domination and influence.

  Let America sleep as it is doing, and it will follow the Soviet Union into oblivion. The Koreans have once again woken the sleeping giant.

  Go! Get out of my sight!” He reached up, ripped the medal from around General Xing’s neck, and slung it across the room, where it bounced against the wall. “Get out!”

  General Xing, his cheeks red and eyes moist from anger, strolled briskly to the door and departed. He wiped the sweat from his forehead as he left.

  Chairman Dao downed the first glass of wine and collapsed against the chair. The doctor in the back of the room hurried forward, taking his stethoscope out of his pocket. The steward immediately filled the glass again as everyone silently watched.

  The doctor put the stethoscope against the aged chairman’s chest. The chairman pushed him away. The doctor moved aside as Dao Chu Shai pulled himself upright.

  “Gentlemen, while we contemplate this unforeseen event, let’s celebrate our new comrade in the West, the Islamic Republic of North Africa and Barbary.”

  Then he mumbled, “And Jet’s contemplate General Xing’s future.”

  CHAPTER 12

  “What the hell is taking them so long?” Doucan asked. A bullet whistled by his ear. He instinctively crouched lower.

  “Damn, that was close!”

  The wall of flour bags behind Duncan and Beau absorbed a torrent of shots. Flour rained on them. Every time a bullet hit the flour bags, the sound reminded Duncan of a baseball player slamming his fist in his glove. So many bullets had been fired that a metallic tang filled the air, overriding the harsh fish smell of the surrounding harbor. How could Beau look so calm?

  “Shit! I hope it’s not much longer.” Beau leaned around the edge of the flour bags and fired a short burst at the warehouses across the road from the pier.

  Well, maybe not too calm.

  The fierce cross fire sent Duncan and Beau diving to the wooden pier.

  They leaned into the flour bags in front of them.

  “Damn, Beau,” Duncan said as the shooting tapered off. “We can’t stay here. We’ll be killed if we do! We’ve got to move. Follow me.”

  “The hell you say?” Beau mumbled, grabbing his carbine by the stock as he took off after Duncan. He wiped the sweat from around his eyes, smearing dirt across his sunburned face.

  The two men scrambled around and behind more pallets, putting several thousand pounds of flour between them and the Algerian rebels who had them pinned. They looked at each other, amazed neither was wounded.

  Grinning, Duncan said, “See! God still loves us. Let’s go.”

  Dodging from pallet to pallet, they were fifty feet from where they started when an explosion sent them rolling down the pier. Duncan grabbed his right knee as a thin trickle of blood stained his cammies.

  Star bursts danced across his vision.

  “Splinter,” he blurted through clinched teeth to Beau’s unasked question. Duncan grabbed the three-inch piece of wood and jerked it out.

  At least it was his bad knee, he thought as he rubbed the swollen, arthritic, now bleeding, joint. Small flesh wound, he told himself.

  Smoke and flames engulfed the front of the pier.

  “Armored car?” asked Beau.

  “No! Rocket-propelled grenade. The armored car is out there. If it’s the one from the village, it doesn’t have a cannon,” Duncan replied.

  “At least, Colonel Yosef said it didn’t.”

  “Well, that gives me a warm fuzzy. We’ll just ignore its machine gun.”

  From the other side of the pier Monkey fired a long burst from his MG-60. Several rebels running down a side alley achieved martyrdom.

  The others turned back to the warehouse from whence they came.

  “Allah Alakbar that, assholes!” Monkey yelled.

  Rapid tooting of a whistle from the end of the pier drew the attention of the SEALs on the pier. The SEALs on the boat waved for them to hurry. The whistle signaled the diesel engine on the old coastal water carrier had finally been started.

  “Maybe we should have stayed with Bashir,” Beau remarked.

  “If I’d known those assholes were this tenacious we would have. How the hell they found us is beyond me.”

  “Think he’ll be all right?”

  “Who?”

  “Bashir.”

  “Of course. Bashir is a product of the desert. Who else could have found a doctor in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, like he did?”

  “Good thing, too. H. J.“s shoulder wound would have been septic by now.

  I was amazed. Amazed doctors existed in Algeria and amazed he had penicillin.”

  A series of shots dug smalj holes in the pier near them.

  Screams in Arabic interrupted from the other side of the barrier.

  Machine-gun fire rippled over their heads.

  Duncan peeked over the top of the bags. He raised his carbine and fired at several attackers who had decided to make a dash across the top of the warehouse. One of them grabbed his stomach as he tumbled off. The abandoned cargo blocked their view of the rebel hitting the road.

  Movement across a warehouse window caught Beau’s attention. He fired a burst, shattering the window.

  “How the hell did they followed us, is what I want to know,” Duncan said, more to himself than to Beau.

  Another explosion rocked the flour bags to the left, knocking Monkey back into a nearby pallet.

  “Doesn’t matter. They have and …” Beau stopped as the sound of a revving engine reached their ears. “Shit! They’re working up nerve to try the armored car.”

  “Monkey!” Duncan shouted. “You okay?”

  Monkey sat up, shook his head to clear it, and then gave Duncan a thumbs-up.

  “Let’s hope they have that boat ready. If they don’t, then we’re going to have one hell of a problem. Let’s go!”

  The SEAL machine-gunner only needed to be told once. Monkey looked like a hunchbacked Neanderthal dragging a club as ran down the pier, his backpack and MG-60 gripped tightly in each hand. Bullets peppered his footsteps as he zigzagged toward them.

  “Damn, that hurts!” he shouted as wood splinters hit his ankles and calves.

  Beau rolled from cover, fired several bursts from a horizontal position in the direction of the rebels. He was rewarded with a cry as one of his random shots hit.

  “That makes twenty-two.”

  “Twenty-two what?” Duncan asked as Monkey tumbled into the small space behind the sacks of flour. Beau rolled to the right, following Monkey behind the barrier.

  “Twenty-two kills.”

  “You keep count?” Duncan asked incredulously.

  “Well, not exactly, but I like to round things off to a good statistic.”

  Monkey tossed his pack aside and threw himself prone with his MG-60 ready to fire.

  Duncan looked at Monkey’s legs. “Monkey, you’re bleeding.”

  Monkey looked down at his legs. Small pinpoints of blood flowed from where several inch-long splinters stuck out from his calves. He reached down and began to pick them out like bothersome thorns from a walk in the woods. “It’s nothing, Captain. More blood from where that came from.”

  From the direction of the water carrier, Colonel Yosef and Chief Judiah ran up the pier, dodging from cover to cover as snipers on the warehouse roof tried to shoot them.

  Monkey raised the angle of his MG-60 and sent a deadly blast along the roof. A rebel screamed as a bullet in the chest sent him tumbling off the edge to his death below.

  “That’s two roadkill now,” Bea
u added.

  “Twenty-three,” Monkey said, grinning at Beau. “You’re behind, Commander.”

  Yosef and Chief Judiah shoved themselves into the crowded space.

  “Captain, you look as if you could use some help,” Colonel Yosef said.

  “You remember that armored car that chased us out of the village yesterday?”

  Yosef nodded.

  “We didn’t lose it. It’s up ahead somewhere. It’ll come through these sacks of flour any minute, like grease through a goose. The wood pallets and metal containers crisscrossing the head of the pier are the only things stopping it. That, and they’re probably still trying to figure out what they’re up against. When they figure out we don’t have anything to stop it, then they’ll come.”

  Colonel Yosef reached into his pack and pulled out several square packages. He tossed one to Duncan.

  “Semtex?”

  “Semtex. I brought it with me when we fled the palace. Semtex can be a great tonic when applied properly.”

  “And how do you propose to apply it?”

  Yosef rapped his knuckles on the pier. “The pier, it is only wood. We will blow it. Then the armored car will be trapped on one side while we are on the other.”

  “And then we’re stranded with only the sea behind us,” Beau added.

  “That’s true, but we’re already trapped with only the sea behind us.

  Besides, the boat engine works and it is a water carrier. And there’s tinned food on board.”

  Turning to Duncan, the Algerian Palace Guard commander continued.

  “Captain, I am trained in explosives. Chief Judiah tells me he is your explosive expert?”

  “That’s true. Though it’s a skill we didn’t expect to use.”

  “In fact,” Beau added, “we didn’t expect to spend three exciting, fun-filled days in an Algerian shooting gallery as targets.”

  The firing from the rebels increased in tempo.

  “I don’t think we have much longer.”

  “I think you are right, Captain. I suggest that you, Commander Pettigrew, and your machine-gunner Monkey retreat to the boat. Chief Judiah and I will lay the explosives.” “I’ll stay here,” Duncan said.