Final Winter

There was screaming, loud screaming, and Aliyah realized it was her. She closed her mouth, found that she was on the concrete floor of the bunker. The floor was…something was wrong. It was tilted. It was still dark and there was a flare of light, as the father in the corner lit a cigarette lighter. Hassan was standing over her, his face a mix of concern and fear, and she got up. ‘I have to go, I have to go now!’

‘It’s not safe!’

‘I don’t care! I want my mama and papa, and I want them now!’

Aliyah staggered over to the door, tried to get it open. It seemed jammed. She pulled and pulled, and something wrenched free. The sirens were still screaming. She ran up the stairs, knowing that Hassan was following her, not caring.

Up and up she went, crying now, the sirens louder as she got closer to the surface. She broke free, out into the alley. Other sirens were sounding as well, ambulances and fire engines. She went out to the street, kept on running. The shelter. She would go to the shelter and find mama and papa and bury herself in their arms, and promise to be a good daughter, never again to leave their side, if only the sirens and shrieking would stop, if only it would be quiet and the war would stop and papa would work at saving sick children and mama would teach her French, and all would be safe and quiet and beautiful…

The shelter. Where was the shelter?

She ran up one block, and then took a left. More sirens from the distance, and then an ambulance shrieked by, and then another. She took another corner and—

Smoke. Chaos. Aliyah brought both fists up to her head and beat at her ears.

The shelter was across the street, but she could not get any closer. There were ambulances and fire trucks and masses of people, crowding in and around the structure. There was a barbed-wire fence around the concrete edifice, and people were tearing at it with their bare hands. A large plume of smoke was billowing from the rooftop, rising higher and higher into the night sky as if from a chimney venting the output of some horrible fire going on underneath the concrete and steel and—

A group of men emerged from the crowd, carrying a stretcher. They were chanting and screaming, and each held a fist up in the air as their other hand held the frame. An Iraqi flag was draped over the burnt body, barely concealing it. And another stretcher emerged, and another, and Aliyah was on the ground, prostrate, beating her forehead against the asphalt, praying to her savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, to save her and her mama and papa, and she stayed there all night long, as the hundreds of burnt bodies were dragged out of the destroyed shelter, her mama and papa among them, charred pieces of flesh and bone, and save for a distant aunt she was now all alone in the world, and when she finally stood up and saw the useless fire trucks still there in the morning, pouring water into the shelter, she was still sixteen, but she was no longer a young girl.

Hassan held no interest for her anymore nor did much of anything else. Not even her Lord Jesus Christ, who had permitted the Americans to come here and kill her family.

All that mattered now was revenge.

Revenge to make the Americans pay for what they had done to her and papa and mama.

And eventually that day, Aliyah returned home, and started to think and plan and work very, very hard.

CHAPTER NINE

In the conference room, Adrianna Scott could feel the greasy chill of despair come over her Tiger Team, but she would not allow it to get out of hand. She looked around the room and said, ‘You know the weakness of scenarios. They assume the very best chances for our enemies, the very worst response by our agencies. But Final Winter was a war game. It was horrible. But it was just a game.’

The police detective said, ‘A hell of a game, Adrianna. Jesus Christ, I thought weaponized anthrax was hard to produce, especially in quantity. Where the hell is this stuff coming from?’

Adrianna said, ‘Darren?’

The NSA man said, ‘Before the second Gulf War, the Secretary of State said that Iraq had produced hundreds of pounds of anthrax. Still hasn’t been found yet. Not hard to figure out that the stuff was either sold or given away before the Third Infantry Division plowed into Baghdad.’

‘Shit,’ Brian said.

Adrianna said, ‘Monty, there’s no way to guarantee a one hundred percent success rate in sealing the borders or intercepting the teams. Correct?’

A morose nod of the head. ‘You’ve got it.’