This is a continuation of Icarus Falls (An Alternate 1960's)
1.
It was a cold day, a few sad patches of snow speckled the ground and Ahmed idly wondered how much of it was made up of corpses as he waited for the Turkish convoy to round the corner. He was alone in the hills, high above the kill zone, and he was shivering. Waiting gave a person plenty of time to think, and though a slow burning sort of stress clouded his thoughts even as the cold made him shiver, he found his thoughts darting to the strangest places as he sat, breath steaming in the air, the very air he was breathing so cold it felt as though he were inhaling shards of glass.
He thought about the days, only a few months earlier, when the dreams that his family had held so dear, a united Kurdistan, had been mere abstractions, and how the Israeli atomic campaign had changed all of that. Many people in his village had gotten sick from the fallout that had rained down upon them in the days and weeks after the mushroom clouds had faded, but even as they lay and coughed bloody phlegm, the elders had been discussing joining the growing Kurdish led uprisings that were beginning to ripple across the remnants of the Middle East, gathering weapons and recruits alike.
Those days had been chaotic, and Ahmed had watched as streams of new arrivals came to the village, refugees, jihadists and fighters alike. The refugees were ragged, desperate families who had mostly been moved along on their way. They were heading towards Azerbaijan and Turkey, anywhere that was away from the growing chaos in their homelands. The jihadists were different, a mixture of hollow eyed older men who had spent years fighting everywhere from Pakistan to Kazakhstan to the Sinai. They didn’t agree politically or religiously with the more moderate Kurds that they found themselves thrown together with, but a fragile alliance held as they both found a common enemy in the governments that opposed them. As such they segregated themselves fanatically, forbidding much more than casual glances between the groups. They were quiet though, Ahmed liked that about them.
The fighters, though they had perhaps more in common with the jihadists than anyone else, mingled with both groups. They were an eclectic group, made up of all different types, refugees from China and Pakistan, former Soviet soldiers who had deserted during the Soviet Civil War, and Muslims of a hundred different ethnicities and nationalities who had come to answer the call of jihad following the destruction of Mecca.
They had made the village an endlessly more diverse place, but even as they arrived and Ahmed began to hear stories of the collapse of what remnants of government had survived the Israeli strikes, there was an undeniable tension in the air, war was coming, and nobody knew who they would be fighting.
A month later Turkish forces crossed the border and swiftly occupied the nation. The jihadists had mostly left at that point, leaving the north to do battle with the Turks in the central flatlands. There they could occupy oil fields and hold them hostage in exchange for ransoms and weapons. The fighters had scattered, but more than a few had stayed put, looking more for a home than anything else.
The Turkish occupation forces had sent more than a few patrols through the village and while the soldiers were quiet and treated his people with respect, Ahmed knew that so long as they were in his village, Kurdistan could never become a reality.
It was with that conviction in his heart that he joined the resistance against the Turkish occupation force. And with that thought still wobbling drunkenly through his head he looked down at the road below him and then at the switch in his hand. It had been taken from the control for a remote controlled car that a refugee family had left behind a few weeks earlier. Shivering, he touched the switch, feeling the destructive potential trapped within, and felt ill, none of the men in the convoy below him would know that he was sitting up here, waiting to snuff them out with the flick of a finger.
In the distance he heard the distant echo of an engine, and suddenly the cold didn’t seem very important, his heart thudded heavily in his chest and Ahmed glanced down at the switch again, the little plastic lever looking as though it was a thousand miles away.
Below him the first truck appeared, no bigger than a matchbox, a gunner aiming his machine gun forward and bouncing as the truck went over the bumps in the road’s uneven grading. There were a half dozen troop carriers behind the first vehicle, all spaced out as per Turkish army regulations. It wouldn’t help them though, and Ahmed rested his finger on the switch, watching the lead vehicle enter the kill zone. He would let it pass, it only had a few people in it, not like the packed carriers behind it.
He closed his eyes and tried to think of something else even as the dull sensation of the switch grounded him in his present situation. Taking a breath, he squeezed his eyes shut tight and jerked his arm forwards, almost ripping the switch from his grasp. Below him the road exploded into flame and dust, debris peppering the slope. The last few vehicles skidded to a halt and though Ahmed could not see them he could hear the distant echoes of wounded men screaming. This was all real, so very painfully real. The screaming was real, the twisted metal and flames were real, and the weeping widows, fatherless children and unhappy gravediggers he had just employed were real as well.
Picking himself up, he dropped the switch and stumbled towards a boulder field where he could hide until the Turks left. It was all for Kurdistan, and Ahmed wasn’t sure if it was going to be worth it.
_______
“You’re a disgrace! You should have been vaporized, not Indira!” Prime Minister Sanjay Gandhi, halfway up the stairway of his plane, gave a curt nod to the man nearest to him and then disappeared from view, barely missing a step. Barely a minute later the heckler, a young woman with an old Indira Gandhi campaign pin displayed prominently on a light blue sari, was being dragged into a waiting police van, blood from a split lip dotting the front of her blouse.
“Why are you just standing there?!” She demanded as the police threw her into the van, the crowd watching, stunned by the sudden brutality they were witnessing. A few people did move, but not towards the young woman, instead they scrambled to get out of the way of the police officers who moved to form a cordon between the crowd and the disappearance taking place. There was no need though, not a single voice was raised in dissent, the people were all too aware of the ever present police vans and armored vehicles surrounding the square. They were expected to behave, and behave they did. From the window of his plane, Prime Minister Gandhi smiled to himself and awaited takeoff.
“There was only one this time.” Gandhi nodded, glancing at the man sitting next to him.
“The people are getting used to it. I think that those riots in the early days were isolated incidents.” The man next to him was older, and unlike Gandhi he wore his seatbelt. He knew better than to insist for Gandhi to buckle up though, the younger man would simply scoff at him, he was twenty seven and the leader of the most populous nation on the planet, the lack of a simple seatbelt couldn’t take him down.
“Indeed. Having that woman arrested in broad daylight though...that could cause trouble. Why didn’t you just have her followed home and taken then?”
“Bansi...” Gandhi said, “you don’t understand. You have to show the people that you’re in charge otherwise they will think that you’re weak.” Bansi Lal nodded.
“Sure.” Gandhi adjusted his seat so that he sat up straighter and smiled to himself.
“Good thing we’ve got the Americans to blame. The unemployment is because of refugees coming in from Pakistan, the lack of trade revenue is because American wars crippled the global economy. Hell, letting them attack the embassy in Mumbai every now and then does wonders for the national mood.” That made Lal smile, his grin more than a little forced. The last incident had been a little more than a year before and had resulted in fifteen Indians being killed by American embassy guards after Molotov cocktails were hurled over the walls and the gates were breached by a burning car. Gandhi had made the usual bluster about expelling the American ambassador, but that hadn’t happened. He played poker with the man on occasion and enjoyed scaring the hell out of him with things like the embassy incidents far too much to ever kick him out.
“The Pakistanis and Uyghurs too. That has to be the one thing we’re actually on the same page as the Americans about.” Gandhi nodded, the plane was beginning to move down the runway, leaving the crowd behind.
“I would honestly support the Uyghurs in a fight over the fucking Americans.”
“Wouldn’t we all.” The plane lifted off the ground and though the seatbelt light was on, Gandhi did not buckle in. He was atop the world, perhaps literally, and nothing was going to bring him down.
_______
“So we’re now in possession of one very disgruntled ex-President. How do we deal with this?” Bush looked decidedly unamused by the question being posed.
“Goddamnit.” He responded instead, and slicked his hair back with one palm, he had made sure that Brooke was far away before engaging in this conversation. He tried to make it a policy to include his Vice President in most decisions he made, but there were certain things that he didn’t want the man to know about.
“We need to deal with this quickly, the local police department has already noticed that both Johnson and election official are missing. We’ve been monitoring their calls and right now they have no clue what’s happening but it won’t be long before they start up the whole hark and cry over Johnson.” Bush looked across the room at Kissinger.
“That’s not the point Henry,” he said, “you didn’t think to tell me before you kidnapped an ex-President of the United States?” The question hung in the air, heavy and unanswered. Kissinger looked taken aback, like a child whose gift to a parent had just been shredded before their eyes.
“I...” He trailed off and Bush sighed.
“I’ve faced insubordination before Henry, and that led to treason. The last person who pulled shit like this with me was Helms, and last time I checked he got shot in the fucking head for crossing me.” Kissinger’s face was still shocked and for perhaps the first time in his career he was completely flummoxed, unable to formulate a response.
“I...I’m sorry sir.” He said finally. Bush grunted and shook his head.
“Since the police are going to find out that Johnson is missing no matter what we do, we need to figure out a way to disappear Johnson. Go bury him in the desert somewhere...where he’ll never be found.” Next to Kissinger, Rumsfeld shook his head, he had been reading through the planned security bills that Bush was about to send to congress.
“I disagree,” he said, “if we disappear Johnson right as he was looking at election information then that will look suspicious as hell on our part. We need to drown that part out.”
“How?”
“We’ll say that Johnson got kidnapped, but not by us. Instead he was snatched by Islamic terrorists.” For a long moment there was silence, then Bush nodded slowly.
“That would kill two birds with one stone. It’d get rid of Johnson for a while, and I’d be able to pass these bills without much opposition from Kennedy and his people.”
“For a while?” Kissinger asked, “we can’t let him go.” Bush sighed.
“I know. We may have to kill him. Perhaps in a botched rescue mission...that also kills all of the terrorists involved.” Kissinger nodded.
“We still have time to plan all of this out. In any case, I’ll be sure to inform you of any developments that arise.” Bush nodded and rose from his chair.
“That would be good.” He left the room and checked his watch, barely seven and he had already committed an impeachable offense. What a start to the fucking day...
1.
It was a cold day, a few sad patches of snow speckled the ground and Ahmed idly wondered how much of it was made up of corpses as he waited for the Turkish convoy to round the corner. He was alone in the hills, high above the kill zone, and he was shivering. Waiting gave a person plenty of time to think, and though a slow burning sort of stress clouded his thoughts even as the cold made him shiver, he found his thoughts darting to the strangest places as he sat, breath steaming in the air, the very air he was breathing so cold it felt as though he were inhaling shards of glass.
He thought about the days, only a few months earlier, when the dreams that his family had held so dear, a united Kurdistan, had been mere abstractions, and how the Israeli atomic campaign had changed all of that. Many people in his village had gotten sick from the fallout that had rained down upon them in the days and weeks after the mushroom clouds had faded, but even as they lay and coughed bloody phlegm, the elders had been discussing joining the growing Kurdish led uprisings that were beginning to ripple across the remnants of the Middle East, gathering weapons and recruits alike.
Those days had been chaotic, and Ahmed had watched as streams of new arrivals came to the village, refugees, jihadists and fighters alike. The refugees were ragged, desperate families who had mostly been moved along on their way. They were heading towards Azerbaijan and Turkey, anywhere that was away from the growing chaos in their homelands. The jihadists were different, a mixture of hollow eyed older men who had spent years fighting everywhere from Pakistan to Kazakhstan to the Sinai. They didn’t agree politically or religiously with the more moderate Kurds that they found themselves thrown together with, but a fragile alliance held as they both found a common enemy in the governments that opposed them. As such they segregated themselves fanatically, forbidding much more than casual glances between the groups. They were quiet though, Ahmed liked that about them.
The fighters, though they had perhaps more in common with the jihadists than anyone else, mingled with both groups. They were an eclectic group, made up of all different types, refugees from China and Pakistan, former Soviet soldiers who had deserted during the Soviet Civil War, and Muslims of a hundred different ethnicities and nationalities who had come to answer the call of jihad following the destruction of Mecca.
They had made the village an endlessly more diverse place, but even as they arrived and Ahmed began to hear stories of the collapse of what remnants of government had survived the Israeli strikes, there was an undeniable tension in the air, war was coming, and nobody knew who they would be fighting.
A month later Turkish forces crossed the border and swiftly occupied the nation. The jihadists had mostly left at that point, leaving the north to do battle with the Turks in the central flatlands. There they could occupy oil fields and hold them hostage in exchange for ransoms and weapons. The fighters had scattered, but more than a few had stayed put, looking more for a home than anything else.
The Turkish occupation forces had sent more than a few patrols through the village and while the soldiers were quiet and treated his people with respect, Ahmed knew that so long as they were in his village, Kurdistan could never become a reality.
It was with that conviction in his heart that he joined the resistance against the Turkish occupation force. And with that thought still wobbling drunkenly through his head he looked down at the road below him and then at the switch in his hand. It had been taken from the control for a remote controlled car that a refugee family had left behind a few weeks earlier. Shivering, he touched the switch, feeling the destructive potential trapped within, and felt ill, none of the men in the convoy below him would know that he was sitting up here, waiting to snuff them out with the flick of a finger.
In the distance he heard the distant echo of an engine, and suddenly the cold didn’t seem very important, his heart thudded heavily in his chest and Ahmed glanced down at the switch again, the little plastic lever looking as though it was a thousand miles away.
Below him the first truck appeared, no bigger than a matchbox, a gunner aiming his machine gun forward and bouncing as the truck went over the bumps in the road’s uneven grading. There were a half dozen troop carriers behind the first vehicle, all spaced out as per Turkish army regulations. It wouldn’t help them though, and Ahmed rested his finger on the switch, watching the lead vehicle enter the kill zone. He would let it pass, it only had a few people in it, not like the packed carriers behind it.
He closed his eyes and tried to think of something else even as the dull sensation of the switch grounded him in his present situation. Taking a breath, he squeezed his eyes shut tight and jerked his arm forwards, almost ripping the switch from his grasp. Below him the road exploded into flame and dust, debris peppering the slope. The last few vehicles skidded to a halt and though Ahmed could not see them he could hear the distant echoes of wounded men screaming. This was all real, so very painfully real. The screaming was real, the twisted metal and flames were real, and the weeping widows, fatherless children and unhappy gravediggers he had just employed were real as well.
Picking himself up, he dropped the switch and stumbled towards a boulder field where he could hide until the Turks left. It was all for Kurdistan, and Ahmed wasn’t sure if it was going to be worth it.
_______
“You’re a disgrace! You should have been vaporized, not Indira!” Prime Minister Sanjay Gandhi, halfway up the stairway of his plane, gave a curt nod to the man nearest to him and then disappeared from view, barely missing a step. Barely a minute later the heckler, a young woman with an old Indira Gandhi campaign pin displayed prominently on a light blue sari, was being dragged into a waiting police van, blood from a split lip dotting the front of her blouse.
“Why are you just standing there?!” She demanded as the police threw her into the van, the crowd watching, stunned by the sudden brutality they were witnessing. A few people did move, but not towards the young woman, instead they scrambled to get out of the way of the police officers who moved to form a cordon between the crowd and the disappearance taking place. There was no need though, not a single voice was raised in dissent, the people were all too aware of the ever present police vans and armored vehicles surrounding the square. They were expected to behave, and behave they did. From the window of his plane, Prime Minister Gandhi smiled to himself and awaited takeoff.
“There was only one this time.” Gandhi nodded, glancing at the man sitting next to him.
“The people are getting used to it. I think that those riots in the early days were isolated incidents.” The man next to him was older, and unlike Gandhi he wore his seatbelt. He knew better than to insist for Gandhi to buckle up though, the younger man would simply scoff at him, he was twenty seven and the leader of the most populous nation on the planet, the lack of a simple seatbelt couldn’t take him down.
“Indeed. Having that woman arrested in broad daylight though...that could cause trouble. Why didn’t you just have her followed home and taken then?”
“Bansi...” Gandhi said, “you don’t understand. You have to show the people that you’re in charge otherwise they will think that you’re weak.” Bansi Lal nodded.
“Sure.” Gandhi adjusted his seat so that he sat up straighter and smiled to himself.
“Good thing we’ve got the Americans to blame. The unemployment is because of refugees coming in from Pakistan, the lack of trade revenue is because American wars crippled the global economy. Hell, letting them attack the embassy in Mumbai every now and then does wonders for the national mood.” That made Lal smile, his grin more than a little forced. The last incident had been a little more than a year before and had resulted in fifteen Indians being killed by American embassy guards after Molotov cocktails were hurled over the walls and the gates were breached by a burning car. Gandhi had made the usual bluster about expelling the American ambassador, but that hadn’t happened. He played poker with the man on occasion and enjoyed scaring the hell out of him with things like the embassy incidents far too much to ever kick him out.
“The Pakistanis and Uyghurs too. That has to be the one thing we’re actually on the same page as the Americans about.” Gandhi nodded, the plane was beginning to move down the runway, leaving the crowd behind.
“I would honestly support the Uyghurs in a fight over the fucking Americans.”
“Wouldn’t we all.” The plane lifted off the ground and though the seatbelt light was on, Gandhi did not buckle in. He was atop the world, perhaps literally, and nothing was going to bring him down.
_______
“So we’re now in possession of one very disgruntled ex-President. How do we deal with this?” Bush looked decidedly unamused by the question being posed.
“Goddamnit.” He responded instead, and slicked his hair back with one palm, he had made sure that Brooke was far away before engaging in this conversation. He tried to make it a policy to include his Vice President in most decisions he made, but there were certain things that he didn’t want the man to know about.
“We need to deal with this quickly, the local police department has already noticed that both Johnson and election official are missing. We’ve been monitoring their calls and right now they have no clue what’s happening but it won’t be long before they start up the whole hark and cry over Johnson.” Bush looked across the room at Kissinger.
“That’s not the point Henry,” he said, “you didn’t think to tell me before you kidnapped an ex-President of the United States?” The question hung in the air, heavy and unanswered. Kissinger looked taken aback, like a child whose gift to a parent had just been shredded before their eyes.
“I...” He trailed off and Bush sighed.
“I’ve faced insubordination before Henry, and that led to treason. The last person who pulled shit like this with me was Helms, and last time I checked he got shot in the fucking head for crossing me.” Kissinger’s face was still shocked and for perhaps the first time in his career he was completely flummoxed, unable to formulate a response.
“I...I’m sorry sir.” He said finally. Bush grunted and shook his head.
“Since the police are going to find out that Johnson is missing no matter what we do, we need to figure out a way to disappear Johnson. Go bury him in the desert somewhere...where he’ll never be found.” Next to Kissinger, Rumsfeld shook his head, he had been reading through the planned security bills that Bush was about to send to congress.
“I disagree,” he said, “if we disappear Johnson right as he was looking at election information then that will look suspicious as hell on our part. We need to drown that part out.”
“How?”
“We’ll say that Johnson got kidnapped, but not by us. Instead he was snatched by Islamic terrorists.” For a long moment there was silence, then Bush nodded slowly.
“That would kill two birds with one stone. It’d get rid of Johnson for a while, and I’d be able to pass these bills without much opposition from Kennedy and his people.”
“For a while?” Kissinger asked, “we can’t let him go.” Bush sighed.
“I know. We may have to kill him. Perhaps in a botched rescue mission...that also kills all of the terrorists involved.” Kissinger nodded.
“We still have time to plan all of this out. In any case, I’ll be sure to inform you of any developments that arise.” Bush nodded and rose from his chair.
“That would be good.” He left the room and checked his watch, barely seven and he had already committed an impeachable offense. What a start to the fucking day...
