Stepping around the corpse that had once been a rider of the Saudi forces, Shahan began to issue orders; slowly the army advanced towards Mecca.
“Here they come,” he muttered, as the gates of the city opened. Other riders flowed in from tents, but most of them seemed to be living in the city. Despite their primitiveness, he reminded himself that one of their carbines – Bloodnok had openly wondered if they dated from Victorian times – could kill as well as one of the AK-47s the army possessed.
For a wonder, every man in the army was falling into a skirmish line, standing out of range of the riders. The riders made a fearsome sight; skulls and human hair streaming away from their saddles. Unlike the even more barbaric Taliban, they advanced without order, firing without discipline, and bellowing loudly.
“Allah Ackbar,” they screamed, the evidence of how far they’d fallen all around them. How can anyone mistake them for Muslims? Shahan wondered, wondering also why he was so calm. He watched dispassionately as the riders swooped forward – was that the feared cousin of Ibn Saud leading them? – And waited for the right moment.
“Allah Ackbar,” the riders howled, and Shahan smiled suddenly.
“Fire,” he shouted, and fired the first shot himself. A torrent of flame poured out of the skirmish line, blasting through horses and men alike, tearing their bodies apart as they impaled themselves upon his guns. They died by the hundreds as they came on, bravely wading into the storm of fire.
And then it was all over. The armoured cars advanced forward, machine guns spitting as the infantry reloaded their weapons with new clips, but there was no need. The handful of observing horsemen were already running, but it was too late; sniper fire from the British troops brought them down in seconds. For all intents and purposes, the army that had crushed the Hashimites had been destroyed.
“This won’t be the last battle,” Bloodnok said. “The problem with tribes like this is that when the controlling tribe is gone, the others will take it as an incitement to riot.”
“You seem to know a lot about this,” Shahan observed. “How did I do?”
“I’d say… not too badly,” Bloodnok said. “Of course, if you were facing my people, the tactic you used would have been suicidal. We would have shot you down from outside your own range, which is what you did to them, or driven forward with tanks.”
“I know,” Shahan said, “Still, how did you know all about this?”
“I served in Nigeria during the peacekeeping operation,” Bloodnok said. “Bloody silly fucked-up thing. We have French on the left of us, Italians on the right of us, and a know-it-all American commander who seemed to think that if they would all get along, there would be no need for fighting. And then we had Pakistani and Russian troops deployed before us, and they abused the locals terribly, and so we were targets for their snipers as well.”
He scowled. “Bastards committed more rapes and murders than half the people we were meant to be keeping apart.” He glared in the direction of the city. “That’s how those things happen; some egghead at the United Nation decides that we have to keep the peace, but seeing no major country can be arsed to do it, they have to summon little counties with piss-ant armies and a serious discipline problem. They, of course, saw the entire mission as a chance for looting, and to rape, and to do things that they would never be allowed to do in their own countries. So children and women and young girls are suddenly fair game – and these are the people who are supposed to be protecting them!
“And then some rat-bastard from a terror group comes along and distributes weapons to all of the people who now hate the west – with good reason – and the whole sorry cycle starts all over again, and again, and again.”
“Not this time,” Shahan said. “I won’t let it happen. This place will become the garden of Eden instead of the horror zone it was before the war.”
“You didn’t do badly,” Bloodnok said. “I’ve served under worse. Look, a delegation from the city is coming out; they want to meet the new masters.”
In the end, it hadn’t been anything like as bad as Shahan had feared. The city leaders, men who’d remained underground for nearly ten years, had emerged. A quick revolution – half of the remaining Saudis had been killed by their sex-slaves – and the city was ready to welcome its new masters.
Explaining what was happening proved harder. The Royal Family, the one that had nearly been crushed by Ibn Saud, had been expecting to become the new rulers again. To be told that they would not be rulers, but equal partners had shocked them, the more so because of the new civil code that Shahan had instituted at once. The new army didn’t loot or rape, something that the rulers were grateful for, but their insistence on personal liberty was almost as shocking.
Still, the remains of the Saudis regrouped at Riyadh. Shahan had secured his rear area by distributing land and property to the new city council, and sent his mobile force on ahead. It failed to catch Ibn Saud; the master of the desert had blended back into the desert, perhaps heading back to his homeland. Patrols were a waste of time, he discovered; Ibn Saud was a master at hiding from hostile patrols. Discovering his harem, with all the women raped and murdered, had shocked the Muslims to the core; several of the new Imams were all for pronouncing a Jihad there and then.
“I suspect that you will have to guard the new buildings for some time,” Bloodnok observed, as the newcomers began to work. The water-cleansing factory was a wonder to the Arabs; they watched it at work with glee. Indoor plumbing, teaching, and basic science – and the death penalty for selling daughters – was slowly changing them. As time passed, the new system became larger and larger; newcomers from Britain were changing the shape of the nation.
“I think that we might have made a difference,” Shahan observed, as another evening drew to a close. There was fighting all over the world, in many different places, but, for once, there was peace in the holy land.
Chapter Twenty-Five: Culture Shock
Diogenes Club
London, United Kingdom
2nd September 1940
The Diogenes Club, Somerville knew, had been founded as a semi-serious joke by a man in 1920, apparently with the wholehearted support of the young Winston Churchill. Silence was golden within the club; anyone who spoke outside the Speaking Room would be evicted. Multiple offences would see the culprit barred from the club for life. Somerville had been astonished – and then delighted – to learn that it still existed in the brave new world.
He touched his mobile phone that hung by his belt. His minder had explained that it used a special government-issue SIM card, one that automatically encrypted his words so eavesdroppers could not intercept what he said. Long words like ‘quantum encryption’ and ‘limited array signals’ had slipped past Somerville’s comprehension; it was enough to know that he could be reached any time by anyone with his number.
I hate this fucking thing, he thought. The Royal Navy had suffered, badly, from the Admiralty trying to direct operations at long distance; the Goeben fiasco had been caused by the commanding officer being given several different sets of contradictory orders. Now… he wasn’t certain that even Admiral Turtledove, a man he had come to respect, had any freedom to set his own orders. Didn’t the modern world understand that the man on the spot knew what was happening with far more understanding than men in distant offices?
The car drew up in the small parking lot and Somerville climbed out, waving his minder goodbye. “I’ll be back for you as soon as you call,” the minder said, and drove off. He’d wanted to accompany Somerville, but the Admiral had insisted – quite firmly – on going alone.