Repulse: Europe at War 2062-2064 (7 page)

The thorniest problem Coll had to deal with was Israel.  The country had enjoyed little sympathy since its clandestine attempts to derail the Peace-Buffer Settlement in 2054 became public knowledge.  On Jordan’s and Syria’s assimilation into the Caliphate, the Second Caliph had decreed the withdrawal of all believers to form a buffer-zone along the Caliphate’s new border with Israel.  Some 88% of the remaining Palestinians, Arabs and other Muslims inside Israel elected to relocate to the Caliphate.  The buffer ranged in breadth from fifty kilometres in the south to nearly a hundred at the Golan Heights.  In her 2056 book
How the Middle East Found Peace
, Jennifer Lewis is scathing in her assessment of the Israeli government’s duplicity: ‘While in public Prime Minister Mendelberg praised the Peace-Buffer Settlement, in private he and many Israeli politicians seethed.  Israel’s economy relied too greatly on military production and sales.  Exports had been falling as traditional markets continued to contract, and the century-old confrontation with Muslims needed to continue to exist.  A final resolution would spell disaster for the economy.  So Mendelberg set Mossad agents to work to undermine the Muslim exodus from Israel’s borders.’

Lewis goes on to describe in depth how close Israel came to achieving its objective, and praises the Caliphate, and especially the Second Caliph, for seeing through the provocation and not responding with bloodshed.  Thus did the Caliphate establish itself in the eyes of the world not only as non-violent, but as an entity which avoided confrontation at all costs.  However, in 2055 the Second Caliph would be succeeded by the Third Caliph, and a great deal would change, only to be fully revealed on that fateful Monday morning.

By 2062, Israel’s economy still struggled to export sufficient armaments.  In addition, although Jewish interests retained control of much wealth and therefore power, these fortunes had long been eclipsed by financial conglomerates and banks in China, India and Brazil.  Beijing in particular had little difficulty encouraging Chinese companies to freeze Jewish-backed interests out of the world’s largest economy.  The US continued to support Israel financially as it had throughout the century of its existence, but local pressures on President Coll made Israel a politically difficult issue.

On the morning of 6 February 2062, the Israeli Prime Minister, Uri Mendelberg, now in his sixth year of power, displayed a similar dismay and shock as other leaders of the democracies, edged with biting declarations that he’d anticipated the Caliphate would eventually attack the West in some form, sooner or later.  Records show that Mendelberg rapidly became boorish in his demands for an immediate and comprehensive counter-attack.  More measured voices, including Gen. Sir Terry Tidbury’s, advised caution in the face of an enemy who had shown a remarkable prescience and complete tactical superiority.  Mendelberg bitterly opposed the military logic of measured consideration before deciding the response.  The emergency meeting broke up in the early afternoon in general agreement that NATO and Europe faced a unique and specific threat which required appropriate preparation before any attempt to bring Turkey back into the family of nations could be mounted.  As Napier’s aide confided to his diary: ‘The boss worried that the attack on Turkey had completely unhinged Mendelberg.  As it turned out, it had, and he would bring the destruction of his own country down on his neck in punishment for not being able to cope.’

As soon as the emergency meeting concluded, Mendelberg took matters into his own hands.  Irrespective of the balance of his mind, records show that Mendelberg enjoyed widespread support from key members of his cabinet and government.  This support also extended to the general population.  One of the handful of survivors, Ayala Salomon, at the time a twenty-eight-year-old nurse working at a hospital in the Holon district of Tel Aviv, later told the post-war US Congressional hearings: ‘Mendelberg knew we had to act, we had to defend ourselves, as we always had.  Whatever you might think now, however it turned out, at the time we believed we were doing the right thing.  We had to hit them before they hit us.  None of us could’ve realised the trap we walked into.’

Many members of the Knesset hardly needed summoning for an emergency debate, held in-camera.  No records of the debate survive, but it is reasonable to assume that some dissenting voices may have been heard.  At some point, the decision was made not to consult Washington, but to proceed unilaterally.  This would merely compound this greatest of errors.  In a matter of hours, nuclear-armed attack ACAs were prepared and the Israeli military brought its substantial capabilities to full readiness.  The Israeli super AI at the centre of the country’s command systems was tasked specifically with ‘rendering Israel safe from assault by the Persian Caliphate’.  In truth, this had been its main objective since its inception; it only had to make final refinements to a well-established plan.  The super AI estimated the probability of the attack failing at a mere 1.37%.  It was enough.

As with many other aspects of the war, in the following decades pro-Western historians have attempt to evidence more rational explanations for actions which, even without the benefit of hindsight, appear to have been wholly reckless.  However, apart from the preceding historical context, there is little to redeem Prime Minister Mendelberg.  Although Israeli moderates had corralled the more hawkish elements on the political right, the shadow cast by the Peace-Buffer Settlement debacle still denied the country any great sympathy.  The Second Caliph’s diplomacy and patience had made many see Israel as the aggressor; a rogue state in a new, peaceful Middle East.

At 01.33 local time on the morning of Tuesday 7 February, the Israeli Air Force launched two hundred and fifty-six Nesher 101-C ACAs in five waves, armed with uranium-234 fission warheads yielding between two and ten kilotons each.  The volume of attempted overkill was impressive; for example, Tehran alone was to receive sufficient destructive power to render it uninhabitable for several decades.  Each wave launched at two-minute intervals, and was immediately detected by US satellites.  These began tracking the ACAs until they left the Peace-Buffer Zone and entered Caliphate territory, at which point the Caliphate’s jamming rendered the Israeli attack invisible.  Mendelberg contacted Washington to inform them of his country’s actions, much to President Coll’s consternation.

Time passed.  Israeli military command requested the US to consult its earthquake monitoring stations for any indications of seismic activity.  It then relayed the same request to Indian seismology facilities.  At length, all returned with nothing to report.  By 04.30, the Israeli military was obliged to conclude that the attack had failed absolutely.  One can imagine the confusion in several installations inside Israel, confusion which would shortly turn to material concern.

The first Caliphate ACAs to cross into the Peace-Buffer Zone did so at 07.11.  Unknown to Israel and the rest of the world, the Caliphate had indeed destroyed the assault in its entirety, and would now deliver a devastating blow in reply.  Here again the super-AI technology employed by the West failed comprehensively.  Mendelberg’s and the Knesset’s gamble had been that as the bulk of the Caliphate’s forces were now engaged in subduing Turkey, the Caliphate’s main population centres remained relatively unprotected.  In the event, the Caliphate had rearmed to such an unforeseen degree that not only did it have the resources to defeat Israel’s attack, it was able to reply in the same coin.  Moreover, the Caliphate did so in a way that would do most to hold global public opinion on its side, for while Israel attacked with nuclear weapons, which the Caliphate disabled, the Caliphate replied with non-nuclear - although no less lethal - conventional armaments.

Sirens blared across all of Israel’s major conurbations and local governments continuously transmitted urgent warnings for citizens to take cover in the ‘secure room’ which each Israeli home was obliged by law to have.  However, news of the overnight attack on the Caliphate had spread, and thousands of moderate citizens from the artisan district of Tel Aviv formed an impromptu protest in the early light of the morning.  They gathered at Rabin Square and paused to await the arrival of half a dozen MKs from the two leading left-wing political parties.

Five thousand metres above them, hundreds of IDF defence ACAs held their formations as the Caliphate machines advanced swiftly across the Peace-Buffer Zone.  The Israeli designed and manufactured Nesher 101-A defensive ACA was believed to be the most advanced weapon of its time.  It came in a number of variations for different military roles: air-to-air combat; air-to-surface smart missile; as well as anti-tank and anti-personnel designations, with armaments to suit the target.  Its shielding was by a narrow margin the strongest in any Western army.  Thus, while confusion may have reigned concerning what became of Israel’s own attack on the Caliphate, it is reasonable to assume many people in Tel Aviv felt confident of their country’s ability to defend itself.

At 07.16, Israeli ACAs were directed to intercept the leading Caliphate machines, and battle was joined.  Writing in
The Fall of the State of Israel
a few years later, historian Avraham Udell describes what happened next: ‘The protesters hushed when strange popping sounds could be heard distantly in the bright blue of the morning sky.  Most had been asking each other for news of their own country’s attack on the Caliphate, and none expected they could be at any serious risk of harm.  This made the resulting panic even more terrifying.  A thousand slates and other mobile devices were thrust skywards as little black dots became visible against the blue, a thousand live feeds being sent around the globe in real time.  Some of the protesters had the C-ALL-2 implant, and now activated it to upload their personal vision to their preferred social sharing platforms.  The resulting images make extremely painful viewing.  In numerous sequences we can see the Caliphate ACA glide down towards the crowd, who at once explode into flame.  The Caliphate had succeeded in installing a powerful laser in a quick and agile ACA, which now slowed as it burned the protesters.  Three pulses from the invisible light set hair and clothes aflame, and most of the sequences end in screams of agony with views of exposed flesh bubbling up in red and angry blisters, before the intense heat destroyed the devices and the images end.’

This represented an important tactical advance by the Caliphate.  Among the NATO powers, lasers required a substantial and secure power source to be effective, and their use was therefore restricted to ships, tanks, and mobile battlefield support units.  Over Tel Aviv on this Tuesday morning, the Caliphate introduced the world to an effective laser built into a relatively small and highly mobile ACA, something which NATO military scientists regarded as being at least five years in the future.

In
The Fall of the State of Israel
, Udell goes on: ‘In moments, tens and then hundreds of these hideous monsters roamed unopposed over Israeli cities and towns.  People collapsed and shrieked as they burned; windows shattered and the shards melted; roofs fractured and whitewashed brickwork exploded.  The world looked on, aghast, as the live-feeds terminated in a cacophony of a nation’s fiery anguish upon its execution.’

It is not necessary here to dwell on Israel’s agony.  The significant military distinction lies in the Caliphate’s approach to the two targets: the objective with Turkey was its assimilation into the Caliphate, thus the assault on that country aimed to disable Turkey’s military and civilian infrastructure merely enough to facilitate assimilation with the minimum inconvenience.  With Israel, however, the military objective was wholesale annihilation: of its people, cities, and buildings.  Throughout Tuesday, the lethal laser-armed ACAs roamed supreme over Israeli conurbations, prioritising military installations, transport hubs, civic facilities, and finally individual dwellings.

In the midst of this fury and as vast plumes of smoke from the firestorms began to drift across the eastern Mediterranean, at 10.31 the Caliph released a comprehensive media package, containing extensive footage of Israel’s nuclear-armed ACAs which its own defences had brought down and disabled earlier that morning, as well as an announcement ‘deeply regretting’ Israel’s decision to force the Caliphate to act. This had the effect of undermining calls for a ceasefire from the UN, US and other nations sympathetic to the Israeli cause.  Ultimately, it proved to be the beginning of what surviving Israelis and other Jews around the world would shortly come to term the ‘Second Shoah’; another Holocaust costing the lives of millions of Jews, only on this occasion effected over a matter of days rather than years.

Still reeling from the previous day’s attack on Turkey, Western leaders had little time to come to terms with this new and altogether more shocking event.  In the Pentagon, chaos reigned at the heart of the US military as it sought to comprehend and respond to the unfolding disaster.  Lynne Cantwell, at the time a twenty-eight-year-old analyst in the Operations Directorate of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, earned respect when she told the US Congressional hearings after the war: ‘I don’t think any of us had slept since the Sunday afternoon, and that was starting to take its toll.  Some folks had real trouble taking it in just how blindly Israel had walked into the Caliphate’s trap. But I must stress that the Services never had any shortage of bravery.  We were fielding demands to be allowed to attack.  The Services were straining at the leash to get at the Caliphate, but the signals coming back from the White House and the NSA were not to allow any suicide missions, because, in truth, any further activity by us must surely have ended as badly as it did for the Navy.’

Cantwell and others in the Pentagon also knew something which the rest of the world did not: emergency Israeli defence procedures included a scenario where a dedicated US rapid-reaction unit would extract the Prime Minister and any other VIPs to hand from Tel Aviv in the event of an overwhelming enemy assault.  This unit responded from a US base at the naval support facility in Naples.  However, it too could not withstand the Caliphate’s saturation of the battlefield, and the forty-eight US Marines tasked with recovering the Israeli Prime Minister perished along with him and his entourage.