Warren Murphy: Arabian Nightmare

"Behold!" he said proudly. "This is the border with our country and unfortunate Kuran. And this long brown shape must be the infamous Maddas Line."

"Naw, it's a squiggle of color put there by nature."

"Allah put it there, and Allah does not roll dice."

"Baloney."

"Is that pork?" Bazzaz asked, wrinkling his hooked nose.

"Search me. What are these cracks?" "These are lines of attack. See, they are coming from the north. They obviously represent tank and soldier queues."

"Mechanized and infantry columns," said Hornworks thoughtfully. They did look pretty realistic at that.

"And these," Bazzaz said excitedly. "See those lines that drive up to strike the Iraiti lines? These are counterattacks."

Hornworks blinked. He leaned closer. They did kinda have that look. In fact, the strategy was pretty damn strack.

General Hornworks caught himself. "Wait a chicken-scratching minute," he exploded, straightening. "These are just cracks."

"If this is so, why did your Paragon-"

"Pentagon."

"-send this to you by messenger?"

That was a point General Winfield Scott Hornworks had no clear answer to.

"What're you suggesting?" he asked at last.

"If these lines mean that Irait will attack here, here, and here," Bazzaz said, indicating the border line, "we must arrange our peoples."

"Forces."

"To intercept their charges here, here, and there."

General Hornworks looked askance. "I'll buy that on one condition," he cautioned.

"Speak this thing," Bazzaz said sincerely.

"That nobody, but nobody, hears about our little tete-a-tete. "

"You mean strategy session."

"No, I mean tete-a-dang-tete," said General Hornworks, signaling the turnkey. "I could be cashiered for what I'm about to do."

As they walked from the dungeon, the all-important tortoiseshell passing back and forth between them, Prince General Suleyman Bazzaz made a mournful comment.

"It is unfortunate the Iraitis did not wait another three years before attacking."

"Yeah?" his American counterpart growled. "Why's that?"

"Because by then I would have had my own personal aircraft carrier and your services would not even have been necessary."

Chapter 7

They were lost in Abominadad. It was easy to become lost in Abominadad. Every building boasted a huge portait of Maddas Hinsein, wearing a bewildering assortment of uniforms. And even though he seemed to have more changes of clothes than Imelda Marcos had shoes, it was still not as many uniforms as Abominadad had buildings.

"I think the American embassy is around this next corner," Don Cooder ventured.

"Yeah? What makes you say that?" asked Reverend Juniper Jackman.

"Last time I was here, the U.S. embassy was around the corner from a picture of President Hinsein dressed as a biblical warrior riding a chariot."

Reverend Jackman looked up. Sure enough, there was Maddas Hinsein, flogging a team of horses like an outof-shape extra from Ben Hur.

Cooder led the way around the corner. The bags under his eyes seemed to melt in disappointment as they encountered a sun-bleached mosque.

"If that's our embassy," Reverend Jackman said sourly, "we're definitely in the wrong pew."

"I think we're lost," muttered Don Cooder.

"I think you're right."

They paused in the shadow of the mosque. The clatter of Hind gunships came from somewhere over the rooftops. It did not quite drown out the deafening clash and clangor of those giant scimitars, still going at one another with a ferocity equal to an ancient Armageddon.

"Tell me," Cooder said, his eyes haunted. "Do those sound like our helicopters or theirs?"

"You tell me, you're the ace newshound."

"I just read copy."

They heard a racket of rockets and machine guns.

Then, one by one, the fireballs lifted over the rooftops.

"We're being nuked!" Don Cooder howled.

"The Bible was right!" Reverend Jackman screamed, sounding as surprised as a man could be. "The world's gonna end in the Middle East!"

Which was precisely the thought racing through the dazed mind of Maddas Hinsein when he witnessed the identical sight. He had stumbled through the souks and byways of downtown Abominadad in his frayed abayuh until he had come to a movie theater which played, by presidential decree, a perpetual double bill consisting of The Godfather, parts one and two. They were Maddas Hinsein's favorite films.

Maddas had ducked into the theater's welcome darkness. It was deserted, so he took a seat in the center of the first row.

As it happened, he came in on the scene where Don Corleone first mumbled the immortal line, "I'm gonna make you an offer you can't refuse."

Under his concealing veil, the big brown eyes of the Scimitar of the Arabs misted over. He had sent his foreign minister to a summit with the now-deposed Emir of Kuran with instructions to deliver that very line at exactly high noon.

When the emir had refused Irait's generous offer to surrender the vital Homar oilfield and a pair of unimportant islands to Irait, despite his own nation's heavy indebtedness to Kuran, the foreign minister had broken off talks, as instructed.

Obviously the emir had not been a movie buff. He had missed the very clear diplomatic signal.

The first Iraiti tank divisions rolled through Kuran within twenty minutes of that pretext of a meeting. They advanced, as one newspaper had put it, "as if laying down blacktop, not waging war."

Don Corleone knew how to motivate men, thought Maddas Hinsein as the flickering screen images filled him with nostalgia.

Unfortunately, Maddas Hinsein did not know how to run a movie projector. The reel ran out, leaving the engrossed Scimitar of the Arabs blinking at a blindingly white screen. He cursed the lack of a projectionist. The man had deserted his post. When he was restored to power, Maddas promised himself, he would have the slacker hanged for dereliction of duty.

It was as he stumbled out into the deserted streets that Maddas Hinsein saw the first fireball. It was like a fist of flame snaking skyward.

It looked exactly like a mushroom cloud.

"Impossible!" howled Maddas Hinsein. "It cannot be!"

There were two reasons for his hasty conclusion. First, he knew that these could not be U.S. nukes. The Americans had not the stomach to nuke Abominadad, he was certain. Of course, he had been equally certain that the U.S. would not bat an eyelash at his lightning annexation of Kuran. And before that, that his neighbor Irug could not resist his invading armies more than a month. A decade-long war that bankrupted both regimes had resulted.

Then another fireball blossomed before his veiled eyes like an angry flower.

"How can this be?" Maddas sputtered.

The second reason the sight of mushroom clouds stupefied the Scimitar of the Arabs was that he was certain they could not mark an Israeli attack. Not that the Jews would hesitate to strike. But that by now their entire leadership should be breathing Sarin, Tabun, and other fatal nerve gases.

For the deadfall commands President Maddas Hinsein had left with his loyal defense minister, Razzik Azziz, were explicit instructions to unleash war gases on Tel Aviv and other key Israeli installations via the dreaded al-Hinsyn missile.

"Traitor!" snarled Maddas Hinsein. "The coward has betrayed his heritage to save his worthless skin."

Gathering up the ebony folds of his abayuh, Maddas Hinsein stormed down the street.

Another mushroom cloud lifted into the air. The distant thunder of concussion shock blew glass out of windows, showering him with wicked shards. Miraculously, none struck him, which the Scimitar of the Arabs took as a sign from Allah.

His course took him past the sprawl of Maddas International Airport. What he beheld there stunned him to the core.