“And if I refuse to answer?” asked the Doctor.
“Your son has some new friends, and you can live a long time on a diet of bacon grease dipped stuff. You will remain our unspoken of guest for eternity. Perhaps we could even put bacon grease in your tea. A joke, of course, our treaties include provisions for religious adherence. Unlike Iran, the United States takes its commitments to treaties seriously. Now what your son’s new friends do…” Phillip’s voice trailed off.
Dr. Joba slowly repeated the paraphrased question, “How many more nuclear weapons like these can my country construct right now?” Well, that would not be harmful to answer. He suspected they already knew the answer anyway. There were other ways for his follow countrymen to hurt these people.
“Without me, there will be no more attacks from my people using the type of weapon I constructed for delivery on your country and Israel at any point in the near future,” he knew they would have their lie detection experts watching him, and this was the truth. He spoke with very specific language, as usual, ensuring a very limited bit of information that could not be taken any other way than to answer exactly what was asked, and nothing more. Other than the affirmation he built the devices, which they already knew.
Phillip asked his other vital question, “Where are your separation and purification facilities?”
“So deep underground you will never find them. Even if you did know exactly where they are your most powerful weapons are not capable of reaching them.” Dr. Joba suspected they already knew these locations anyway, and were merely seeking confirmation.
He knew they were, in fact, so deep underground that even a nuclear explosion directly above them would do no harm. He had done the calculations concerning this himself, just to be sure. He was confident this answer was also useless to them, in a tactical sense.
Phillip studied him carefully, “Well, thank you sir.” He stood and left the room.
Dr. Joba felt the need to pray, unsure if he had done the right thing. He was rarely unsure of anything, it was a strange feeling to him. He needed the guidance of Allah. He must figure out a way to get some kind of word to his son before it was too late for him.
Even if he couldn’t, one life was a small price to pay for the goal.
Why must it be his son?
Why not some other, less important man’s son?
It didn’t make sense to him.
Why would Allah do these things?
Was this a test sent by Allah?
AP NEWS FLASH: The majority of Americans feel that President Scott Press could do more to stop Iran’s aggressive moves. Out of those polled 52 % said that the use of nuclear weapons would be justified. This poll number continues to increase as the economy continues to weaken. The White House has stated that no use of nuclear weapons is currently being considered, and these would only be used as an absolute last resort. According to a White House source those conditions would include indications another nuclear strike was imminent. The air campaign intended to contain the Iranian aggressor is continuing to see success.
AP ECONOMIC NEWS FLASH: The stock market indexes finished the day absolutely flat for the first time since the attacks. Some traders are suspicious that this may not be the floor, even though it is down a total of 45 % since the events occurred. Food prices have ceased rising, but are remaining at historic highs. Unemployment is on a track to reach 10 % in the United States within the month, as layoffs continue due to massively increasing energy costs impacting businesses of all kinds. If the War is not concluded rapidly the economic impact will result in the worst conditions in more than 100 years. It has been said by some economists that countries collapse under such adverse conditions. There are some limited, although growing in number, claims the current conflict may result in the demise of the United States. The White House responded by calling these claims alarmist, and made by someone seeking to grab headlines and notoriety.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chairman Jackson stood in front of the Situation Room of the White House, once again prepared to brief the President. Also present in the room were the White House Chief of Staff, the remainder of the Joint Chiefs, the National Security Advisor, and Captain Frank Banner by invitation of the President, as well as the President himself.
The room had just been upgraded to include some new video screens, they now had high definition video in 360-degrees. They could see what any individual UAV saw. The new drones were equipped, in some cases, with 360-degree continuous views. This alteration would become helpful when trying to make a decision on an upcoming complex mission.
As everyone was taking their seats, the General looked down at the table before starting his briefing, as everyone and realized just how nicely crafted it was. His mind wandered a bit thinking it was a shame more people didn’t get to see it. He was a sucker for fine craftsmanship. Someday he hoped to retire and learn to do some woodworking of his own, but these were dreams for another day.
“Mr. President, gentlemen, before we get started I would like to introduce to those of you that don’t already know, who this man is, Captain Frank Banner,” Frank stood nervously from his chair, coming to the position of attention, in the back of the room, “The young Captain led the Army Special Forces team that brought us Dr. Joba. The Captain and his men performed the job flawlessly with the result being a successful POW capture, electronic data capture in the form of a laptop computer, and zero American casualties. They were also the team that jumped in and attempted to secure the nuclear research facility in Africa. They attempted to get out of the plane much earlier, but our previous President prevented them from doing so. If you ask him about it he is more pissed than any of us about that. On that mission his team lost two men and he was injured in that action,” the General said by way of introduction and brief biographical sketch of recent events.
There were a series of nods in the Captain’s direction. This room was pure professionalism; the place for celebration and adulation was elsewhere.
“Before we start thinking we are ahead of our enemy we need to go through some data. First, Dr. Joba has talked a little. He is a scientist. As a general rule of thumb they tend to be very specific with language. We assume he is the same, and some of our scientists listened to the audio feed and agree with that. He stated that without him there is no capability for Iran to field additional nuclear devices. He specifically said devices of the type used already. We assume that means nuclear devices in general.
“However, we are still wide open from attacks of other types of WMDs, not to mention terrorist style tactics within the United States. There could even also be nuclear attacks from their allies. As we shall see Iran is no longer working alone. That is a new development in the last few hours.”
The display directly behind him changed to show a satellite image of troop movements, “We have an additional problem. We all know Iran was, and still is, mobilizing. We slowed that down considerably with our air campaign. Now, in addition to Iran, the countries of Syria and Egypt are mobilizing. Every indication shows a massive ground assault being prepared to go, all at once, into Israel. This may or may not be a coordinated effort between those nations. They may all be after the same goal, but the timing is suspicious.
“This represents, I believe, an effort by all of these countries to redraw the map of the Middle East as we know it today. I also believe if they can get Israel to fall they will turn on each other. If that happens, the area will fall into chaos and open general warfare. We want to ensure that neither of those situations comes to pass. That would surely cause worldwide conflict, and the wholesale slaughter of many innocent civilians.