The Uvalde Raider by Ben English (great books for teens TXT) 📕

a free country as a free people in a nation now prosperous, respected, and with the real possibilities of an even brighter future ahead. With the coming reunification, who knew what heights the people of this new Germany might soar to?

However, such expectant optimism was blunted by a disturbing and equally vital, unanswered question. What human depravities would also be a part of that same future? Because within his lifespan there had already been two great evils, which under the same guise of a brighter future had nearly devoured not only himself, but everything else that he ever cared about.

Both of these evils corrupted and laid waste to the very best qualities that constitute humankind, and left it with a pried open Pandora’s Box bubbling with a potent brew made of the darkest elements of man’s inner self. Max Grephardt had experienced great personal pain and sorrow due to that pried open box, and walked with the severe knowledge that the most important lessons in life often come at the highest price.

The first great evil of Nazism had nearly obliterated both family and country. It had been so insidious and deceiving that he and tens of millions of others had blindly followed it without question, at least beyond the point of impending catastrophe. In turn the second one, Communism, had tried to kill him and had taken up where Nazism left off in destroying his home as well as his birthright. Both had only been defeated after a long and difficult contention, documented in near immeasurable quantities of human tears, human sorrows and human blood.

Now there was a third great evil to be reckoned with and Max had been acutely aware of its exponential growth for some time. He had first watched it wantonly murder innocent people at Munich in 1972, while still in its fitfully malicious infancy. As the years went by and this third evil cast its ominous shadow on the Western world like some mythical monster of darkness, Max Grephardt realized it was destined to join the ranks of both Nazism and Communism.

Over the intervening decades it had morphed into something superbly cruel and dangerous, an implacable wickedness that hid behind a corrupted religious doctrine to do its filthy business. The result was something intrinsically vile with no real sense of conscience or decency, as it involved deistic fanatics who could explain away any atrocity with a serene sense of divine self-righteousness.

That one difference, separating it from the prior two great evils, could make this cancerous phenomenon far more ominous than the others put together.

When Max looked into the eyes of Yahla al-Qassam, the elderly German recognized the obscene promise being fulfilled by the fanatical malevolence shining from within. This aberrant mutation of a seventh century prophet had reached its full maturity, and a world some fourteen centuries later was being forced to deal with the resultant raging beast. If allowed to go unchecked, that beast would continue to procreate in ways the other two great evils never contemplated.

Max Grephardt had already made his peace with this unsettling conclusion, and the things that must be done to combat it. No one desires to stand in the path of an unrelenting enemy, an enemy who has been driven absolutely insane by the inner demons that permeated a blackened soul. Such a conflict could never end in any real truce, or be allowed to stalemate with the warring factions agreeing to return to their own homes and keep to themselves. By necessity it would be a fight to the death, and on occasion would continue even beyond there.

Max would always be grateful to America, one only had to be aware of the effects of Soviet rule in Eastern Europe to fully appreciate American idealism and beliefs. Yet in this fight, his desire to be allied with those who had done so much for him and what he held dearest was only part. It went far deeper than that, and carried a rippling effect beyond the individual, the family, the community or the body politic. It even went beyond the continued existence of sovereign powers such as Germany or the United States.

For this would be a battle for the hearts and minds of humankind itself, wherever they came from and whatever their station in life might be. There would be no neutral countries, no diplomatic resolutions and no safe havens for those who wished to remain uninvolved. Max knew there was no good war, but there were definitely necessary ones. And in a necessary war it was the duty of every person to do what they could to defeat the common enemy, no matter what the cost.

In Max Grephardt’s mind a decaying airstrip in the vast, arid expanses of West Texas was indeed a long way from that small Lutheran church along the banks of the Werra, but it was where he would make his stand. The enemy was here, the time was now. The silver-haired holder of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves prepared himself as any good soldier would, steeling both heart and spirit to act when called upon. All that he needed was the slimmest chance and briefest of openings to make the crucial difference.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Micah Templar watched Mustafa through almost closed eyes. Yahla al-Qassam had repeatedly referred to the big Lebanese as his best man, and that his second in command did not need a gun to kill someone. However, the terrorist had one now, a blued Smith & Wesson Model 59 9mm shoved down inside the front of his pants. There appeared to be no extra magazines for it, or evidence of other weapons seen on Mustafa’s person.

The former Marine sized the terrorist up and tried to recall anything else he might have heard or noticed about Mustafa over the past few hours. From what Qassam had said, the long-haired Hezbollah member was some sort of