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“So you believe ova jihad — now just begun — is hopeless,” he finally said in his melodious voice. For a moment Ahmed considered not the words but the voice itself, the voice that had mesmerized the leaders and peoples of the nations of the Islamic world, had in spite of their animosities forged them together into a solid formidable confederation. A confederation that had nearly united central Asia, North Africa, and all of Arabia; the consolidation had continued with the invasion and occupation of Chad and Ethiopia, both campaigns taking less then four weeks. But Sihoud’s expansion had stumbled badly in the invasion of India. Chad and Ethiopia had taken the world by surprise, the media confused by propaganda from both nations that the sizable Muslim populations of the two countries had invited Sihoud in. The same illusion could not be maintained for the crossing into India. The Indians had fought bravely and appealed loudly to the West, and the West had finally decided to take a stand. The Indian adventure, rather than expanding the UIF, had instead united the Western Coalition and brought American, British, and German weapons to bear against Sihoud, and there was no way that Sihoud, even with his unique charisma, could stand up against that. It took Ahmed a moment to realize that General-and-Khalib Mohammed al-Sihoud was looking at him intently, waiting impatiently for an answer.

“I am sorry, I was thinking. What was your question?”

“Rakish, you tell me of the problems of the world and you expect me perhaps to wave this knife and make them all go away.” Sihoud fixed his violet eyes on Ahmed’s for a moment, the dark swirling irises drilling into Ahmed’s, as if looking for a character flaw. “You are a pilot, a scientist who deals with numbers and pieces of metal. I am a foot soldier and I deal with the hearts and souls of men, fighting men.

We are here to defend our claim to the continent, not to fret about oil reserves and turbine blades.”

“General, it is never easy to acknowledge that a battle or a war might be lost.” Rakish chose his words carefully, knowing that to anger Sihoud could mean demotion, perhaps even removal from a war he wanted to fight and needed to fight. “But I have a plan involving the use of a new weapon developed in our Mashhad weapon test lab, a weapon I designed but did not tell you about out of fear that it might fail.” Sihoud’s eyes, always so calm, came up to Ahmed’s, his expression naked, malevolent. Ahmed continued. “Imagine for a moment the power of a weapon that would humble a nuclear bomb. A weapon that would not even need to be used to stop the Coalition. A bomb so terrifying that if we just threaten to use it, would cause Washington to withdraw Coalition forces from UIF soil. But I suggest we do not just threaten to use it. I recommend we deploy it as soon as—”

“You told me we did not have the plutonium for a nuclear weapon, in spite of my orders. Colonel Ahmed. Now suddenly there is a super weapon?”

“We started with the airframe of the Mitsubishi Hiroshima missile, the high-altitude supersonic cruise missile we worked so hard to buy from our Japanese advisors.”

Sihoud glared at Ahmed, but seemed to be paying close attention.

“We filled the warhead space with what we call the Scorpion warhead. Its core is a lightweight high explosive. The HX is surrounded by three layers—a vinyl acetate monomer liquid bladder, a high-pressure bottle of ethylene gas, and a bag of finely ground plutonium particles.” Ahmed checked Sihoud, knowing the general hated overly technical briefings, but there was no other way to explain the system with out the details. “The cruise missile flies at supersonic speed toward its target at an altitude of eighteen kilometers, slowing and diving at the last moments to about a thousand meters above ground zero. The high explosive detonates, blowing the monomer and plutonium dust into the ethylene bottle which then ruptures, and the heat and pressure of the explosion create a sort of reactor system. The monomer and ethylene react to form a liquid polymer emulsion—glue, if you will, sir—which suspends the plutonium in a matrix that floats down to the ground below. The glue cements the plutonium onto every surface it contacts—no wind or rain or decontamination procedure can dislodge the plutonium, and the radioactivity of the plutonium is enough to kill the entire target population within about two kilometers of ground zero, and the deaths are not merciful ones. Radiation poisoning causes a slow and painful death, exactly what the enemy deserve. The target is so contaminated that it must be. abandoned forever.”

Sihoud looked at Ahmed and replaced the knife in its scabbard, his face filled with something that had not been there moments before, a look that Ahmed imagined to be some evidence of a newly found hope.

“How many can we make?”

“Three, perhaps four.”