Scene 4.1
The Empty Quarter, Saudi Arabia; 7:30 pm, 2/23/2007
“Blue team, this is the Blue Six Actual. Tighten your line of advance and proceed as planned. Eyes open, soldiers.” Colonel Gafar al-Shammar's jaw took a firmer set as the colored lights representing two battalions of armor and their supporting elements from the 4th Armored Brigade responded crisply to his recorded command, and several of his subordinates visibly tried to shrink into their chairs in anticipation of the explosion they were sure had to be coming. They'd been watching the tapes of the afternoon engagement over and over for the last three hours, and they were anticipating the fiasco about to unfold on them again with the wonderful concentration that Mr. Johnson had long ago noted usually accompanies a hanging.
“Raptor elements, this is Raptor Six Actual. Begin Sanction three.” That recorded command was new to most of the listeners, as was the precise spread of red dots representing forty two M1-A2 tanks that appeared in a two rough quarter-circles along the low dune ridges to either side of the road. They were more than three kilometers distant from the advancing column, but there was nothing between their 120 millimeter M256 guns and the tightly grouped enemy. Lieutenant Colonel Asam al-Saud locked his back and looked carefully at the debriefing packet in front of him, silently thanking Allah for the dim lighting that hid his paleness. He'd known it would mean some awkwardness when his battalion had been chosen to serve as the hired Elite's Opposing Force for this exercise, and he'd privately resented the way her team of mercenaries had mercilessly drilled his men as though they were raw recruits. A woman, no less, and she had dared to speak that way to warriors! We were recruits, compared to this. Allah help us, we didn't know what professionals were. That crisp, precise voice spoke from the recording again, cool as a parade marshal on the drill field, and Asam shivered in spite of the carefully controlled temperature as he remembered the way his heart had slammed in his chest while he carried out those orders. “Raptor elements, fire pattern five. Aim. Hold your fire. Aim. Fire! All Raptor units, fire at will.”
Almost half the tanks of the two advancing battalions 'died' in the first volley, the unhurried shots of their ambushers shattering against their hulls as their onboard computers informed them they were no longer a part of the exercise and the carefully prepared smoke canisters on their flanks burst open to simulate the pyrotechnic destruction that would have been involved had their ammunition supplies actually been detonated. Thirty seconds later, thirty more of them were flagged 'destroyed' as they tried to untangle themselves from the sudden wreckage of the column. The reconnaissance company wheeled and snapped off a few anti-tank missile shots which went wide in their haste before guns swung to bear on them as well before turning their attention to the mechanized infantry vehicles spread out behind the smoking tanks. It was over in a few seconds over two minutes; in less time than it took to drink a cup of coffee, the bulk of a Saudi Armored Brigade had effectively ceased to exist.
The lights came up slowly, the image of the ranked columns of smoke rising into the desert sky frozen on the monitor, and the slender woman seated at the foot of the table rose to her feet with a slight brush of her gloved hand to smooth her enveloping overcoat back into place. The mercenary wore men's garments beneath the duster rather than a proper burkha, but had at least showed the modesty to shield her face from view. The mirrored T-slit and metal smoothness of her full-face mask gave her an almost alien appearance, enough to make you nearly forget that it was a woman beneath in any event. “Now, gentlemen, who can tell me what went wrong? Because if this were a war, instead of an exercise, very nearly a third of Saudi Arabia's armored forces would be debris decorating a highway a few miles away from here. Almost a third, gentlemen.” She didn't shout, didn't pound the table, scarcely glanced at them as she spoke. In some ways, Asam thought, that only made it worse. He had sweated out dozens of Colonel al-Shammar's dressing downs over the last sixteen months, but none of them approached the razor-sharp precision with which this mere woman could eviscerate a room. “Casualties inflicted by a forces barely a third your size, a force that your advance recon elements drove right through the center of without catching a whiff of them. A force neither better equipped or better trained than your own. So what, gentlemen, went wrong?”
Then the real pain started, because when no one answered her she proceeded to tell them. In brutal, excruciating detail.
Two hours later, Asam stumbled out onto one of the balconies ringing the 4th's headquarters half drunk with fatigue and with his ears ringing from the reaming out the Colonel had hit his subordinates and staff with once “that foreign witch” had left the room. Scarcely a word of the brutal cursing had actually applied to Asam, but the narrow hatred in the Colonel's eyes when they swept over him had left Asam gloomily certain that family connections or not, he was going to find himself pulling every shit duty the brigade commander could find for him for the rest of his tour. Merciful Allah, it's not as though I asked to humiliate him in battle! Lighting a cigarette with unsteady hands, Asam took a deep drag and silently appealed the unfairness of life to the heavens.
“I trust that Colonel al-Shammar made a spectacle of himself after I departed?” The smooth London accent came out of the darkness without warning, and Asam would later swear he nearly departed directly for Paradise at that moment before his heartbeat settled. Alexandra took his silence for an answer, her low chuckle almost sensual in the dark as she moved past him to lean against the balcony railing and feast her eyes on the celestial glory of the stars spread above the pale desert sands. “I rather thought he might. No army is entirely without its lackluster vultures masquerading as hawks.” Asam spluttered a moment, caught between how perfectly she'd expressed his unspoken opinion of his commanding officer and his own duty to protest the slander of a superior, but she silenced him with a gesture. “Don't bother. The numbers speak for themselves. The 4th has consistently suffered in brigade level maneuvers since he was appointed to command it, and you don't have to be a genius to see that he knows less of tactical command than a novice in a nunnery. I hope the government at least gains some significant political advantage by retaining him in this command?”
“Some.” Asam conceded the word with the hint of a sigh, taking another nervous drag on his cigarette. “If... if I may ask, how did you know it was the Colonel rather than the unit itself that would be a problem?”
She made a gesture with her hand and the soft click of hiss of escaping air filled the silence; when she turned back to him, her mask remained drifting in the air as if gravity scarcely applied to it and he found himself looking into the face of a woman whose beauty literally stole his breath. She reached out and took the burning cigarette from his frozen hand, took a slow drag of it between her sensual lips, breathed it out into the clear night air, then fixed him with a smile that would have put a houri to shame. “Napoleon once said that there are no bad regiments, only bad colonels. Something to think on, Asam al-Saud.” She extended her hand, letting the cigarette burn slowly toward her fingers until he stirred himself to take it from her, then rose into the clear night air with her mask trailing slowly behind her. “I suggest you get some sleep, Moqaddam. We have a great deal of work to do tomorrow.” He caught a final glimpse of those fierce, dark eyes, and then she flashed skyward as swift as a thrown blade.
A few blocks away, Alexandra descended into the small cluster of buildings her DeVries personnel had been set up in for the duration of the exercises and set down on the broad balcony outside her unofficial command center. The glittering lights of the half-finished military base glittered back at her from the polished metal of her mask as she called it back to her hand, considering it for a moment with a certain dry satisfaction. Of course it was an important gesture of respect for the proper modesty demanded by the locals, but she probably would have worn it regardless. Soldiers of any stripe often found it more... compelling than her natural features.
“How'd it go, sir? Looked to me like somebody really screwed up by the numbers today.” Sergeant Major Sandra Gale's rough American contralto cut into Alexandra's reflection, and she smiled slightly as she turned to find her senior NCO standing in the doorway with a pair of steaming mugs in hand. To anyone else, the six-foot-one red-head might have been intimidating; to Alexandra, who'd insisted on having her assigned to every military contract she'd been allowed a staff on since they'd met in the hell of Kashmir a few years earlier, she was as comfortable as a well-worn set of boots. She took the left-hand mug, paused for a sip of proper tea, then flashed Sandra a dry smile. “Well, Sergeant, I'd say that would be a severe understatement. Colonel al-Shammar. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like he's learned much from the experience.”
“Maybe he'll grow an ounce of sense tomorrow, sir.” Sandra knocked back a swallow of her coffee and lounged against the balcony railing with studied disregard for the ceramic-titanium body armor she wore everywhere outside the DVNTS base at Windhoek; it wasn't exactly regulation, and neither was the long-bladed knife she wore at her hip, but a Sergeant Major who'd left the American army to find more action in the private sector was allowed a couple of eccentricities. Besides, it wasn't likely to slow her down; in Alexandra's considered opinion, it would have taken a platoon of tanks to accomplish that. “I mean, he's gotta take his head out of his ass now and then for air, right?”
“Unlikely. On the other hand, Lieutenant Colonel al-Saud seems to be shaping up nicely.” Alexandra drained the last of her tea, glancing up at the shimmering veil of stars overhead with a slight smile tugging at the curve of her lips. “We may make a soldier of him yet.” She set the china cup back on its saucer delicately, then turned on her heel and strolled toward the door. “Wrap up the paperwork for me, Sergeant? I'm going to turn in for the night.”
“Of course, sir. Anything for the nightly dispatch back to Pretoria?”
Alexandra paused in the doorway a moment, head slightly dipped, face shadowed behind the veil of her hair, her only movement the slight clatter of china on china as her cup vibrated lightly against her saucer. “Just the day's dispatches and expense reports, Sergeant.”
“Of course, sir.” Sandra watched her CO vanish back into the building with a touch of concern. If the boss wasn't feeling right... then they wouldn't have her running exercises with a couple hundred Saudi tanks, that's for sure. She'll be right by morning. Shaking off the thought, she finished her own coffee and warmed herself with the thought of what the Saudis were going to find themselves suffering through come morning. If I were them, I'd pray the boss gets it out of her system tomorrow, too, or they're gonna have themselves one hell of a long week.
Interlude 2 here
The Empty Quarter, Saudi Arabia; 8:10 am, 2/24/2007
“Okay, people, SitRep. Talk to me.” Alexandra's eufiber was still adjusting itself around her computer harness as she stalked into the communications room, giving the fitted jeans and shirt under her overcoat a slightly liquid ripple, but her eyes were clear and her voice was edged steel as she leaned over the lead com-tech DeVries had assigned her this time and scanned the raw feed.
“Some random Oswald popped a cap in the King.” Sandra leaned back from the monitor she'd be scanning in one of the side chairs, rubbing the last of the sleep from her eyes and silently envying her CO's nova metabolism. “Which seems to have been the proverbial straw, 'cause half the population of Riyadh's trashing the streets and screaming for blood. Can't blame the fuckers, really; eight years ago they were kings of the fucking world, and now after hyper-combustion they find out that what the oil gods give the oil gods take the fuck away.”
“It's worse than that.” Alexandra's fingertip touched the shoulder of the com-tech, nudging her out of the way, and with a few flicks of her fingers a half-dozen overhead monitors normally used for viewing CNN or ongoing maneuvers began flashing with data at dazzling speed as she settled down to the keyboard. “They'd used their oil revenues to build the world's biggest welfare state. When the money started drying up, nobody wanted to explain to the man in the street that he had to lose his government funded house or job or health care. So they've been robbing Peter to pay Paul for years, hoping the plastics market was going to save them. Then they started making cutbacks, little ones, and the mob started to growl... so they backed off. And the King managed to make it look like it was all his idea to return funding to previous levels. You know what happened in Paris in the 18th century when the mob's favorite took a bullet? Or in the middle ages, when someone committed regicide?”
Sandra gave the com-tech a wry look, muttering under her breath as the man found himself a new seat. “You know, every time I hear the name Alexandra Rothstein the words 'it's worse than that' ring in my ears. Sometimes I hear them when I'm sleeping.”
Fingers dancing over the keyboard, Alexandra leaned into the display in front of her and hummed softly against her teeth. “So we've got major rioting, and the police are getting their heads handed to them. Only a matter of time before...” Her fingers froze over the keys, then picked up the pace again at double their prior speed. “McKennon, isn't it? Are we patched into all the Saudi com-nets here?”
“They gave us access to the military and civil air nets, ma'am.” Specialist Dennis McKennon shifted a little nervously in his new seat, trying to do the humanly impossible and watch all the flickering screens at once. “I'd played around with the Saudi National Guard net a little bit... just for practice, you understand. They didn't do such a good job with the encryption, to be honest, so I've had pretty unrestricted access to...”
“All their communications. Yes, so I see.” Data flickered by on the screens around them at seizure inducing speeds, blocks of texts blurring into each other until the half-lit room pulsed with phosphor light. “And it looks like we may have a bigger problem than the riots. Sandra, have one of the security squad get my personal cases out of storage and bring them here. Do it now. And then call Lieutenant Colonel al-Saud and get him here as quietly as you can.” Alexandra's finger snapped down on a final key and the screens around her stuttered to a stop. “The riots are cover. Someone's been directing units from the National Guard into Riyadh since last night without clearing it through the Royal Guard or the local police nets, which means we've got a coup d'etat on our hands.”
She was on her feet a moment later, flicking the pickups for the teleconferencing system to life, and Sandra was already out the door by the time she glanced back over her shoulder. “Specialist, I need the room. Go draw yourself armor and a weapon. Then tell everyone to gear up for trouble.”
Denis McKennon snapped a salute faster than he ever had on the parade ground back home and bolted from the room.
It was the work of a few keystrokes to load the verbal mask she wanted for her broadcast, something with enough mechanical reverberation to hide her gender, and the work of a moment's work more to slice the 'secured' palace networks. Alexandra straightened her spine, tapped the audio pick-up.
The phone rang three times before someone picked up. A quick babble of Arabic invective followed, and Alexandra cut into it with a crisp voice of command that stopped to speaker cold. “This is Wargear. I wish to speak to the Crown Prince. Or the King, assuming he's found time to have himself crowned. If you don't have him on the phone in the next minute, you will be personally responsible for his overthrow and death.”
Silence. Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty. “This is King Sultan bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud. I trust based on my son's panicked interruption of the discussion of who murdered Abdullah that this is critical.”
“It is, sire. In the next few minutes, you will hear reports that elements of the National Guard have entered the capital and have begun firing on the portions of the Royal Guard you have committed to stiffen the police forces controlling the rioting. When that occurs, pick up this phone and dial six three seven. We'll continue our discussion then.”
Alexandra cut the connection with the tap of a switch, rerouted the incoming call protocols, then snapped open the four long metal cases the two soldiers now jogging down the hall toward the armory had left in the doorway. Shrugging out of her overcoat, she reached out a thought and called the dozens of component elements in the cases to her in a stream of glistening metal. Thirty seconds later, as the helmet settled into place around her, she opened her eyes again and flexed her fingers as her eufiber made the final control connections to her armor. “Initiate Cauldron-born.”
“Security voiceprint confirmed. EM signature confirmed. Cauldron-born online.” The synthetic voice of her AI hummed in her ears as her VR projections sparked to life, feeding a 360 degree view of the room around her and dozens of readings directly into her cerebral cortex as her onboard systems flashed green one after another. “All systems nominal.”
“Good.” A flick of light at the corner of her vision told her she had an incoming call, and she brought it up on audio. “I trust you're not calling to tell me I was worried about nothing, your majesty.”
“Indeed.” Alexandra allowed herself a smile at his calm voice. At last, a sensible client. “I trust, mercenary, that you would not have called if you did not have an answer for me.”
“I will trust your majesty to come to the obvious conclusions as to why your nephew Khalid would commit his forces to this particular attempt. As to how to prevent it, do I have your majesty's leave to use those forces available to me to take the actions necessary to break this coup?”
“You have it. The appropriate legal documents will be in your...” A pause, then the hint of a tired smile in his voice. “In your Pretoria office within a few minutes, since your local personnel will doubtless be too busy to review them properly. I presume the payment will be... substantial.”
“I'm sure you're correct. A pleasure doing business with you, your majesty; contract accepted.” The line clicked off, and Alexandra was nearly out of the building before her helmet pinged another incoming signal. “Wargear online. Go.”
“Sergeant Major Gale reporting in, sir. I've got the lieutenant colonel now, but he's reluctant to leave his unit with the news coming in from the capital. The brigade's been stood down, ordered to hold position and let the National Guard handle things in the city; I didn't think it was smart to go into detail with him about your instructions out here.” Leaning against LTC al-Saud's command tank, the Sergeant Major carefully didn't add that he'd probably have listened better to an officer and a man. An NCO woman's word was worth just about spit today. “Orders?”
“Take the jeep back to base and hold position until I come back for you. Your fire orders are Delta Zero. If it's not flying DeVries colors, frag it; all weapons are free.”
“Sir... Delta Zero?” Sandra struggled to keep her voice casual as she strolled back to her jeep, turning the key and letting the motor rev up. “We authorized for that?”
“The only authorization that matters, Sergeant Major. Hold the back door for me; I'm taking the good lieutenant colonel and his boys straight into the teeth of it.” A flicker of light caught in the edge of Sandra's vision, and she whipped her head up just in time to see a figure in dark silver descending from the sky toward them. “Get a move on, Sandra. This is about to be a very unhealthy place for unarmored vehicles to be.”
“See you on the other side, boss. Good hunting.” Without further prompting, she put the jeep in gear and whipped it onto the road back to the DeVries base. If Wargear was out in armor, they were really on the sharp end now.
Descending on the battalion of tanks arrayed on the sand, Alexandra's smile was as sharp as a blade as she flicked her radio to broadcast to all her DeVries elements. “Show them hell if they bother you, snakes. Wargear out.”
“Blue team, this is the Blue Six Actual. Tighten your line of advance and proceed as planned. Eyes open, soldiers.” Colonel Gafar al-Shammar's jaw took a firmer set as the colored lights representing two battalions of armor and their supporting elements from the 4th Armored Brigade responded crisply to his recorded command, and several of his subordinates visibly tried to shrink into their chairs in anticipation of the explosion they were sure had to be coming. They'd been watching the tapes of the afternoon engagement over and over for the last three hours, and they were anticipating the fiasco about to unfold on them again with the wonderful concentration that Mr. Johnson had long ago noted usually accompanies a hanging.
“Raptor elements, this is Raptor Six Actual. Begin Sanction three.” That recorded command was new to most of the listeners, as was the precise spread of red dots representing forty two M1-A2 tanks that appeared in a two rough quarter-circles along the low dune ridges to either side of the road. They were more than three kilometers distant from the advancing column, but there was nothing between their 120 millimeter M256 guns and the tightly grouped enemy. Lieutenant Colonel Asam al-Saud locked his back and looked carefully at the debriefing packet in front of him, silently thanking Allah for the dim lighting that hid his paleness. He'd known it would mean some awkwardness when his battalion had been chosen to serve as the hired Elite's Opposing Force for this exercise, and he'd privately resented the way her team of mercenaries had mercilessly drilled his men as though they were raw recruits. A woman, no less, and she had dared to speak that way to warriors! We were recruits, compared to this. Allah help us, we didn't know what professionals were. That crisp, precise voice spoke from the recording again, cool as a parade marshal on the drill field, and Asam shivered in spite of the carefully controlled temperature as he remembered the way his heart had slammed in his chest while he carried out those orders. “Raptor elements, fire pattern five. Aim. Hold your fire. Aim. Fire! All Raptor units, fire at will.”
Almost half the tanks of the two advancing battalions 'died' in the first volley, the unhurried shots of their ambushers shattering against their hulls as their onboard computers informed them they were no longer a part of the exercise and the carefully prepared smoke canisters on their flanks burst open to simulate the pyrotechnic destruction that would have been involved had their ammunition supplies actually been detonated. Thirty seconds later, thirty more of them were flagged 'destroyed' as they tried to untangle themselves from the sudden wreckage of the column. The reconnaissance company wheeled and snapped off a few anti-tank missile shots which went wide in their haste before guns swung to bear on them as well before turning their attention to the mechanized infantry vehicles spread out behind the smoking tanks. It was over in a few seconds over two minutes; in less time than it took to drink a cup of coffee, the bulk of a Saudi Armored Brigade had effectively ceased to exist.
The lights came up slowly, the image of the ranked columns of smoke rising into the desert sky frozen on the monitor, and the slender woman seated at the foot of the table rose to her feet with a slight brush of her gloved hand to smooth her enveloping overcoat back into place. The mercenary wore men's garments beneath the duster rather than a proper burkha, but had at least showed the modesty to shield her face from view. The mirrored T-slit and metal smoothness of her full-face mask gave her an almost alien appearance, enough to make you nearly forget that it was a woman beneath in any event. “Now, gentlemen, who can tell me what went wrong? Because if this were a war, instead of an exercise, very nearly a third of Saudi Arabia's armored forces would be debris decorating a highway a few miles away from here. Almost a third, gentlemen.” She didn't shout, didn't pound the table, scarcely glanced at them as she spoke. In some ways, Asam thought, that only made it worse. He had sweated out dozens of Colonel al-Shammar's dressing downs over the last sixteen months, but none of them approached the razor-sharp precision with which this mere woman could eviscerate a room. “Casualties inflicted by a forces barely a third your size, a force that your advance recon elements drove right through the center of without catching a whiff of them. A force neither better equipped or better trained than your own. So what, gentlemen, went wrong?”
Then the real pain started, because when no one answered her she proceeded to tell them. In brutal, excruciating detail.
Two hours later, Asam stumbled out onto one of the balconies ringing the 4th's headquarters half drunk with fatigue and with his ears ringing from the reaming out the Colonel had hit his subordinates and staff with once “that foreign witch” had left the room. Scarcely a word of the brutal cursing had actually applied to Asam, but the narrow hatred in the Colonel's eyes when they swept over him had left Asam gloomily certain that family connections or not, he was going to find himself pulling every shit duty the brigade commander could find for him for the rest of his tour. Merciful Allah, it's not as though I asked to humiliate him in battle! Lighting a cigarette with unsteady hands, Asam took a deep drag and silently appealed the unfairness of life to the heavens.
“I trust that Colonel al-Shammar made a spectacle of himself after I departed?” The smooth London accent came out of the darkness without warning, and Asam would later swear he nearly departed directly for Paradise at that moment before his heartbeat settled. Alexandra took his silence for an answer, her low chuckle almost sensual in the dark as she moved past him to lean against the balcony railing and feast her eyes on the celestial glory of the stars spread above the pale desert sands. “I rather thought he might. No army is entirely without its lackluster vultures masquerading as hawks.” Asam spluttered a moment, caught between how perfectly she'd expressed his unspoken opinion of his commanding officer and his own duty to protest the slander of a superior, but she silenced him with a gesture. “Don't bother. The numbers speak for themselves. The 4th has consistently suffered in brigade level maneuvers since he was appointed to command it, and you don't have to be a genius to see that he knows less of tactical command than a novice in a nunnery. I hope the government at least gains some significant political advantage by retaining him in this command?”
“Some.” Asam conceded the word with the hint of a sigh, taking another nervous drag on his cigarette. “If... if I may ask, how did you know it was the Colonel rather than the unit itself that would be a problem?”
She made a gesture with her hand and the soft click of hiss of escaping air filled the silence; when she turned back to him, her mask remained drifting in the air as if gravity scarcely applied to it and he found himself looking into the face of a woman whose beauty literally stole his breath. She reached out and took the burning cigarette from his frozen hand, took a slow drag of it between her sensual lips, breathed it out into the clear night air, then fixed him with a smile that would have put a houri to shame. “Napoleon once said that there are no bad regiments, only bad colonels. Something to think on, Asam al-Saud.” She extended her hand, letting the cigarette burn slowly toward her fingers until he stirred himself to take it from her, then rose into the clear night air with her mask trailing slowly behind her. “I suggest you get some sleep, Moqaddam. We have a great deal of work to do tomorrow.” He caught a final glimpse of those fierce, dark eyes, and then she flashed skyward as swift as a thrown blade.
A few blocks away, Alexandra descended into the small cluster of buildings her DeVries personnel had been set up in for the duration of the exercises and set down on the broad balcony outside her unofficial command center. The glittering lights of the half-finished military base glittered back at her from the polished metal of her mask as she called it back to her hand, considering it for a moment with a certain dry satisfaction. Of course it was an important gesture of respect for the proper modesty demanded by the locals, but she probably would have worn it regardless. Soldiers of any stripe often found it more... compelling than her natural features.
“How'd it go, sir? Looked to me like somebody really screwed up by the numbers today.” Sergeant Major Sandra Gale's rough American contralto cut into Alexandra's reflection, and she smiled slightly as she turned to find her senior NCO standing in the doorway with a pair of steaming mugs in hand. To anyone else, the six-foot-one red-head might have been intimidating; to Alexandra, who'd insisted on having her assigned to every military contract she'd been allowed a staff on since they'd met in the hell of Kashmir a few years earlier, she was as comfortable as a well-worn set of boots. She took the left-hand mug, paused for a sip of proper tea, then flashed Sandra a dry smile. “Well, Sergeant, I'd say that would be a severe understatement. Colonel al-Shammar. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like he's learned much from the experience.”
“Maybe he'll grow an ounce of sense tomorrow, sir.” Sandra knocked back a swallow of her coffee and lounged against the balcony railing with studied disregard for the ceramic-titanium body armor she wore everywhere outside the DVNTS base at Windhoek; it wasn't exactly regulation, and neither was the long-bladed knife she wore at her hip, but a Sergeant Major who'd left the American army to find more action in the private sector was allowed a couple of eccentricities. Besides, it wasn't likely to slow her down; in Alexandra's considered opinion, it would have taken a platoon of tanks to accomplish that. “I mean, he's gotta take his head out of his ass now and then for air, right?”
“Unlikely. On the other hand, Lieutenant Colonel al-Saud seems to be shaping up nicely.” Alexandra drained the last of her tea, glancing up at the shimmering veil of stars overhead with a slight smile tugging at the curve of her lips. “We may make a soldier of him yet.” She set the china cup back on its saucer delicately, then turned on her heel and strolled toward the door. “Wrap up the paperwork for me, Sergeant? I'm going to turn in for the night.”
“Of course, sir. Anything for the nightly dispatch back to Pretoria?”
Alexandra paused in the doorway a moment, head slightly dipped, face shadowed behind the veil of her hair, her only movement the slight clatter of china on china as her cup vibrated lightly against her saucer. “Just the day's dispatches and expense reports, Sergeant.”
“Of course, sir.” Sandra watched her CO vanish back into the building with a touch of concern. If the boss wasn't feeling right... then they wouldn't have her running exercises with a couple hundred Saudi tanks, that's for sure. She'll be right by morning. Shaking off the thought, she finished her own coffee and warmed herself with the thought of what the Saudis were going to find themselves suffering through come morning. If I were them, I'd pray the boss gets it out of her system tomorrow, too, or they're gonna have themselves one hell of a long week.
Interlude 2 here
The Empty Quarter, Saudi Arabia; 8:10 am, 2/24/2007
“Okay, people, SitRep. Talk to me.” Alexandra's eufiber was still adjusting itself around her computer harness as she stalked into the communications room, giving the fitted jeans and shirt under her overcoat a slightly liquid ripple, but her eyes were clear and her voice was edged steel as she leaned over the lead com-tech DeVries had assigned her this time and scanned the raw feed.
“Some random Oswald popped a cap in the King.” Sandra leaned back from the monitor she'd be scanning in one of the side chairs, rubbing the last of the sleep from her eyes and silently envying her CO's nova metabolism. “Which seems to have been the proverbial straw, 'cause half the population of Riyadh's trashing the streets and screaming for blood. Can't blame the fuckers, really; eight years ago they were kings of the fucking world, and now after hyper-combustion they find out that what the oil gods give the oil gods take the fuck away.”
“It's worse than that.” Alexandra's fingertip touched the shoulder of the com-tech, nudging her out of the way, and with a few flicks of her fingers a half-dozen overhead monitors normally used for viewing CNN or ongoing maneuvers began flashing with data at dazzling speed as she settled down to the keyboard. “They'd used their oil revenues to build the world's biggest welfare state. When the money started drying up, nobody wanted to explain to the man in the street that he had to lose his government funded house or job or health care. So they've been robbing Peter to pay Paul for years, hoping the plastics market was going to save them. Then they started making cutbacks, little ones, and the mob started to growl... so they backed off. And the King managed to make it look like it was all his idea to return funding to previous levels. You know what happened in Paris in the 18th century when the mob's favorite took a bullet? Or in the middle ages, when someone committed regicide?”
Sandra gave the com-tech a wry look, muttering under her breath as the man found himself a new seat. “You know, every time I hear the name Alexandra Rothstein the words 'it's worse than that' ring in my ears. Sometimes I hear them when I'm sleeping.”
Fingers dancing over the keyboard, Alexandra leaned into the display in front of her and hummed softly against her teeth. “So we've got major rioting, and the police are getting their heads handed to them. Only a matter of time before...” Her fingers froze over the keys, then picked up the pace again at double their prior speed. “McKennon, isn't it? Are we patched into all the Saudi com-nets here?”
“They gave us access to the military and civil air nets, ma'am.” Specialist Dennis McKennon shifted a little nervously in his new seat, trying to do the humanly impossible and watch all the flickering screens at once. “I'd played around with the Saudi National Guard net a little bit... just for practice, you understand. They didn't do such a good job with the encryption, to be honest, so I've had pretty unrestricted access to...”
“All their communications. Yes, so I see.” Data flickered by on the screens around them at seizure inducing speeds, blocks of texts blurring into each other until the half-lit room pulsed with phosphor light. “And it looks like we may have a bigger problem than the riots. Sandra, have one of the security squad get my personal cases out of storage and bring them here. Do it now. And then call Lieutenant Colonel al-Saud and get him here as quietly as you can.” Alexandra's finger snapped down on a final key and the screens around her stuttered to a stop. “The riots are cover. Someone's been directing units from the National Guard into Riyadh since last night without clearing it through the Royal Guard or the local police nets, which means we've got a coup d'etat on our hands.”
She was on her feet a moment later, flicking the pickups for the teleconferencing system to life, and Sandra was already out the door by the time she glanced back over her shoulder. “Specialist, I need the room. Go draw yourself armor and a weapon. Then tell everyone to gear up for trouble.”
Denis McKennon snapped a salute faster than he ever had on the parade ground back home and bolted from the room.
It was the work of a few keystrokes to load the verbal mask she wanted for her broadcast, something with enough mechanical reverberation to hide her gender, and the work of a moment's work more to slice the 'secured' palace networks. Alexandra straightened her spine, tapped the audio pick-up.
The phone rang three times before someone picked up. A quick babble of Arabic invective followed, and Alexandra cut into it with a crisp voice of command that stopped to speaker cold. “This is Wargear. I wish to speak to the Crown Prince. Or the King, assuming he's found time to have himself crowned. If you don't have him on the phone in the next minute, you will be personally responsible for his overthrow and death.”
Silence. Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty. “This is King Sultan bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud. I trust based on my son's panicked interruption of the discussion of who murdered Abdullah that this is critical.”
“It is, sire. In the next few minutes, you will hear reports that elements of the National Guard have entered the capital and have begun firing on the portions of the Royal Guard you have committed to stiffen the police forces controlling the rioting. When that occurs, pick up this phone and dial six three seven. We'll continue our discussion then.”
Alexandra cut the connection with the tap of a switch, rerouted the incoming call protocols, then snapped open the four long metal cases the two soldiers now jogging down the hall toward the armory had left in the doorway. Shrugging out of her overcoat, she reached out a thought and called the dozens of component elements in the cases to her in a stream of glistening metal. Thirty seconds later, as the helmet settled into place around her, she opened her eyes again and flexed her fingers as her eufiber made the final control connections to her armor. “Initiate Cauldron-born.”
“Security voiceprint confirmed. EM signature confirmed. Cauldron-born online.” The synthetic voice of her AI hummed in her ears as her VR projections sparked to life, feeding a 360 degree view of the room around her and dozens of readings directly into her cerebral cortex as her onboard systems flashed green one after another. “All systems nominal.”
“Good.” A flick of light at the corner of her vision told her she had an incoming call, and she brought it up on audio. “I trust you're not calling to tell me I was worried about nothing, your majesty.”
“Indeed.” Alexandra allowed herself a smile at his calm voice. At last, a sensible client. “I trust, mercenary, that you would not have called if you did not have an answer for me.”
“I will trust your majesty to come to the obvious conclusions as to why your nephew Khalid would commit his forces to this particular attempt. As to how to prevent it, do I have your majesty's leave to use those forces available to me to take the actions necessary to break this coup?”
“You have it. The appropriate legal documents will be in your...” A pause, then the hint of a tired smile in his voice. “In your Pretoria office within a few minutes, since your local personnel will doubtless be too busy to review them properly. I presume the payment will be... substantial.”
“I'm sure you're correct. A pleasure doing business with you, your majesty; contract accepted.” The line clicked off, and Alexandra was nearly out of the building before her helmet pinged another incoming signal. “Wargear online. Go.”
“Sergeant Major Gale reporting in, sir. I've got the lieutenant colonel now, but he's reluctant to leave his unit with the news coming in from the capital. The brigade's been stood down, ordered to hold position and let the National Guard handle things in the city; I didn't think it was smart to go into detail with him about your instructions out here.” Leaning against LTC al-Saud's command tank, the Sergeant Major carefully didn't add that he'd probably have listened better to an officer and a man. An NCO woman's word was worth just about spit today. “Orders?”
“Take the jeep back to base and hold position until I come back for you. Your fire orders are Delta Zero. If it's not flying DeVries colors, frag it; all weapons are free.”
“Sir... Delta Zero?” Sandra struggled to keep her voice casual as she strolled back to her jeep, turning the key and letting the motor rev up. “We authorized for that?”
“The only authorization that matters, Sergeant Major. Hold the back door for me; I'm taking the good lieutenant colonel and his boys straight into the teeth of it.” A flicker of light caught in the edge of Sandra's vision, and she whipped her head up just in time to see a figure in dark silver descending from the sky toward them. “Get a move on, Sandra. This is about to be a very unhealthy place for unarmored vehicles to be.”
“See you on the other side, boss. Good hunting.” Without further prompting, she put the jeep in gear and whipped it onto the road back to the DeVries base. If Wargear was out in armor, they were really on the sharp end now.
Descending on the battalion of tanks arrayed on the sand, Alexandra's smile was as sharp as a blade as she flicked her radio to broadcast to all her DeVries elements. “Show them hell if they bother you, snakes. Wargear out.”