The Caliphate Invasion by Michael Beals

Author:Michael Beals [Beals, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-08-23T23:00:00+00:00

Day Twenty

Al Jumum, Saudi Arabia

17 Miles northwest of Mecca slave camp

Kat kept her binoculars up and scanned the sky for drones. The ghost town below didn’t leave much for sightseeing. Neither neutron bombs nor drones had swept this satellite village on the outskirts of Mecca, but it was just as surely dead. Something about living right alongside the primary supply route from the ISIS-run slave farms along the fertile coast and their even larger breeding camp in Mecca encouraged the locals to flee long ago.

Behind her, in the shadows of the abandoned apartment complex, her “soldiers” palavered in Arabic.

“Why do we have to get so close?” One of them, an insurance salesman by trade, hugged his Rocket Propelled Grenade launcher, as much for comfort as to emphasize his point.

“The manual says these things have a 500-meter range. The machine guns even farther. There’s no reason to risk ourselves by getting up close and personal. That’s what happens when you let a woman lead you into…”

Kat couldn’t understand the insurgent’s gibberish, but she could sniff out bitching and moaning from a mile away. She jerked her head at the men and elbowed Major Nurasi, the nominal field commander of the detachment. The old man just shrugged and scratched his goatee.

Despite the prince’s enthusiasm, his conservative countrymen balked at the idea that a woman, especially a foreigner, would command them. Prince Saud compromised by publicly assigning Kat as a technical advisor, and privately threatening his lieutenants to treat her as his right hand. In practice, that just meant she not only had to train these civilians-turned-freedom fighters, but discipline them as well. All without any official authority.

Kat flagged over her translator. The jittery young man shuffled up and clutched his AK-47 like a talisman. Kat fought down her instinctive rage and flipped his weapon’s safety back on.

“What did I tell you? Quit playing with that before you blow your balls off!”

She was tempted to make a public example of him, but the confused anguish on his face softened her. The boy was no soldier. Probably never would be. From what she understood, he was just an engineering student, studying in California, who had the bad luck to take his summer break back home with his family at the worst possible time.

“Anyway, tell the major that his boys need a pep talk. They’re too nervous and are losing focus.”

The translator passed along the gist of the message, even if it seemed like he was tacking on a ton of excessive formality.

Major Nurasi, previously a captain in the Saudi Arabian National Guard, simply grunted and spoke through the translator.

“What do you want me to do? We have trained and readied ourselves as you requested. What happens next is what Allah wills.”

Kat fought hard to keep her temper in check. Despite the name, the Saudi National Guard was little more than a tribal military force personally loyal to the royal family. They weren’t professional soldiers, but damn it all, Nurasi still had received enough formal training to understand the basics of leadership.

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