Goliath

Covah and his crew are gathered in the control room, watching a live CNN report being telecast on one-half of Goliath’s giant viewing screen. On the other half of the split monitor is a real-time sonar surveillance map detailing a section of the Mediterranean, from the isle of Crete east to the shoreline of Lebanon and Israel.

A dozen warships are depicted in electric blue, ready to become threats.

For the umpteenth time in the last twenty-four hours, the broadcast flashes images of the two bulldozed United States pure-fusion facilities in Livermore, California, and Los Alamos, New Mexico, and the recently destroyed complex in Bordeaux, France. Thousands of demonstrators outside the fences continue to picket, despite reassurances from President Edwards that all pure-fusion research has been officially banned.

The image returns to downtown Baghdad. Remote CNN cameras, mounted from balconies, as per Saddam’s orders, reveal views of the Presidential Palace, located on the northern bank of the Tigris River. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have gathered to show support for their leader. Heavily armed members of Saddam’s elite Republican Guard, stationed along the perimeter, mean to keep them there.

“Look at them,” Covah says. “Saddam’s using the Iraqi people as human shields while he makes a grandiose statement of martyrdom.”

“The rest of the population has already fled to the mountains in southern Turkey,” Jala Chalabi says.

His younger brother, Masud, nods. “You would think at least one of Saddam’s generals would have put a bullet in his head by now.”

“No one can get close enough to do the deed,” Jalal says. “Saddam murders anyone who even looks at him the wrong way.”

“Saddam’s not in the Republican palace,” Masud mutters. “I know exactly where the murdering coward is.”

Simon Covah moves to the viewport, mesmerized by the tranquillity of the deep. He stares at his reflection and wonders why fate has pushed him down this dark path of destruction, and if he’ll ever see the light.

You are thirty-seven and the world is a different place. The Soviet Union is gone, and with it, your naval career. You have a family now, Anna and your two beautiful daughters, but your homeland has been turned into a cesspool of nuclear waste. The Americans recognize your talents, and the freedoms of the West are too intoxicating to ignore. Plans are made to travel to the States. And then the nightmare begins.

Milosevic orders all Albanians to be forcibly removed from Serbian territory, and your family is harbored in the path of genocide. You rush back to your in-laws’ village, only to discover hell. Militants capture you. Milosevic’s goons—teens, disguised as soldiers, sadists—masquerading as human beings. They break your bones, but they cannot reach your soul. Frustrated, they march your wife and daughters inside as spectators, determined to break your spirit. The sight of your loved ones tears at your heart, bringing your cries, exactly what your torturers were yearning for. It is time to die. The smell of your own urine mixes with the gasoline as your face ignites like a tinderbox and you race outside, so pumped with anger and adrenaline that even your captors bullets cannot put you down.