The Caliphate by André Gallo (books to read for 13 year olds .TXT) 📕

for now. If you don’t tell the Jews to stop their attack, they will be responsible for killing your daughter. I’ll call back after the attack has stopped. Oh, I almost forgot. I also have one of your CIA officers, Steve Church.”

     Tariq al Khalil hung up.

     While he was on the phone, Hussein assembled his remaining fighters at defensive positions at the ground level. There they waited for the assault.

***

Downstairs, Habib tried to obtain information from the Israeli scientists. One of the men going through the Israelis’ pocket litter had interrupted him.

     “Look, two of them have the same last name. They’re probably married—Shoshanna and Aaron Amitai.”

     This gave Habib a plan. He would talk to them separately, first on a scientist-to-scientist basis and then ratchet up the pressure and use violence if necessary. Shoshanna was a nuclear physicist and Aaron, who had a Ph.D. after his name, was an expert on lasers. Scanning through the other IDs, Habib noticed that Amitai was the only one claiming a Ph.D., although he assumed that this might mean he was the only one flaunting his doctorate.

     Habib was starting to form an idea of what this center was for, but he couldn’t believe the conclusion he had reached. He continued to question the Israeli scientists, one by one, but focused most of his time on the Amitais. He spoke to them as their equal, which he was in terms of education and knowledge, and they responded to him but with very general statements that were not helpful.

     Nevertheless, he started to put the pieces together. He knew that the laser, invented in the early 1960s and at first considered to be a solution without a problem, showed its military uses in what was termed “precision-engagement” during the first Gulf War. He was also aware that laser weapons had become serious counter weapons to the ballistic-missile threat. The Airborne Laser program had shown that a missile could be shot down at a range of several hundred miles. On a smaller scale, the Zeus, a laser developed by the U.S. Army, was being used in battle to destroy mines from the air. Another laser weapon had destroyed artillery shells and mortar rounds seconds after they were fired during field-trials. A laser beam, with its speed of light, lack of recoil, and long range, was an attractive defensive technology, because ballistic missiles were constructed with lighter metals, as were aircrafts. They could take down a biological, chemical, or nuclear missile before it even left enemy territory.

     Habib went to report to al Khalil.

     “I’ve obtained enough information from the scientists to conclude that we’re dealing with some sort of laser gun. But I reached a dead end. They refuse to get into the details I need. If we had more time, I could probably get some of them to cooperate willingly. But, since we need the information now, I think we have to use tactics your fighters are better at than I am.”

     “Right,” al Khalil replied. “You should have told me earlier.”

     He called one of his soldiers and told him to help Habib, who took him into what had become the interrogation room, furnished with computer stations and maps. He had given orders to tie Shoshanna to an office chair before he left the room to seek al Khalil. This was the first signal that Habib was changing tactics.

     “Okay,” he said, “we tried it the easy way. Unless you start telling me about the specifications of the weapon, its capabilities and controls, we’re going to bloody your neat uniform and your spic-and-span laser center.”

     She looked at him with wide, defiant eyes.

     “I knew it. I’m not afraid. My people have survived the Holocaust. You and your kind are doomed to fail, just like the Nazis.”

     “Well, we will see how well you survive,” Habib said then motioned to the guard who produced a bayonet. Under Habib’s direction, he took one of Shoshanna’s hands, pressed it on the computer table in front of her and made as if to apply the blade to the first phalange of her little finger. She pulled her hand from his grasp in fright. The soldier then forced her hand back to the table and, with a sudden and powerful thrust, plunged the bayonet through the back of her hand and into the wood of the desk. She screamed in shock and pain.

     Habib was startled and somewhat unsettled but he told himself that extreme measures were necessary.

     “Now, tell me about the controls. There must be some pre-targeting already programmed. Tell me about that. Give me what I need on timing of the laser and on the power settings.”

     Her only response was to spit in his direction.

     The guard said, “I will get her husband.”

     Habib nodded and the guard came back with Aaron Amitai who, upon seeing his wife’s hand nailed to the table, ran to her and tried to pull the bayonet out. The guard hit him on the side of the head with the stock of his AK-47 and sent the Israeli scientist sprawling. His wife called out his name but Amitai stayed on the floor for a few seconds, blood trickling down his face.

     “Stand up,” the guard prodded him, then tied him to another chair and, with a glance, handed control back to Habib.

     “You can stop this,” Habib told Amitai. “Your wife doesn’t have to go through any more pain. But you must give me the information I want. We will get it, one way or another.”

     Amitai said, “You are a fascist devil. I don’t care that you claim to pray to some god. It’s not any god I’ve ever heard of. Stop what you’re doing to my wife.”

     Habib motioned to the soldier who pulled the bayonet out