Categories > Books > Harry Potter > The Rise and Fall of an Empire
A/N: Once again thank you for the reviews. I have recovered from a brief battle with depression, which spawned the cry for help. From now on updates will take a few weeks to post. In addition, if you read this story at least it is considerate enough to tell me your opinion. Hit the damn purple button and tell me how I am doing, or I will hunt you down and gut you like a fish if you do not. I can do it I have the resources and nothing but time to kill.
A storm in the east
Camp Al-Shazarif, one hundred twenty-five kilometers inside the Iranian border
0037 GMT (4:07 AM Tehran Standard Time), 1 December 2001
The eyes of one Mohammad Zaquari looked out over the darkened desert in this, the largest training ground for Al Qaeda and the jihad in opposition to the west. The tents were tranquil at present, but before long they would be bustling with activity, as the dark lord's proxy would be stopping through to dole out instructions for the jihad. As dawn approached, the watch fires extinguished and new recruits began their daily prayers to Allah, and veteran jihadi began weapons training. The man assigned as the proxy between the dark lord and this particular camp was a Belgian ex-Red Beret christened Henry Cazeux, and he had a noteworthy rancor against the Americans. The jihadi would have even considered him one of their own if not for the actuality that he was an infidel, a Roman Catholic. He was not only a cunning and sadistic warrior, but he was also one of the prevalent suppliers of methamphetamines to the world at large, in consequence, he raked in huge amounts of cash for the dark lord.
When Henry Cazeux arrived in, what he considered, a pitiful camp in the middle of the worst fucking place on earth, he could not help but sneer in disgust at the desert rats his master was so magnanimously helping. He carried with him the stolen blueprints for the Iranian nuclear reactor near the Gulf of Aden. The dark lord wanted these jihadi to 'appropriate' radioactive waste grade material from the reactor complex, and then produce a dirty bomb that would spread radioactive waste over a huge area. Cazeux was exceedingly dubious that this... militia... could perform this mission up to the standards of his lord. Nevertheless, since the dark lord assigned him to this work personally, he would do this work to the best of his ability. He would rather report the camps position to the allies and have to work with these inferior beings.
As Zaquari looked over the plans, his mind filled with reservation and apprehension. Even though the Iranian government had issued no official statement regarding their position on the war, security forces all over the world beefed up just in case the dark lord attacked them. A few weeks ago, this mission would have been a cakewalk, but now it resembled more of a kamikaze mission than anything else did. Moreover, they could no longer bribe the guards to look the other way, not after the Hagia Sophia had destroyed, along with 800 souls inside. That was one of the few things that the fundamentalist government absolutely condemned, the destruction of a mosque and holy place. Even with the medium artillery the small band of jihadi would be able to get to the site in a couple of weeks, they would still face stiff resistance. Nevertheless, if Allah's will were for him and his men to die in this operation, then he would meet his death with open arms. After Cazeux left he began his daily training, but he also heaved a sigh of relief at having the crazy Belgian far away from him.
Yemeni freighter /King Xoser/, 20 kilometers north-northwest of Alexandria, Egypt.
0341 GMT (5:41 AM Local), 1 December 2001
Shipping in the Mediterranean had been chaotic since the dragon attacks, which proved that the enemy could strike both the land and sea. Ships had been frantically to get any port, in the hope that military air defenses would somewhat protect them. Even during the best of times, the port at Alexandria was a nightmarish place to navigate, with a relatively shallow bottom and protected archeological sites where no commercial traffic could pass overhead. However now, it looked like the freeway into Los Angeles at rush hour, in other words ships were end to end and there was a huge backup in the approaches to the port. The Xoser was one of those unfortunate ships stuck far out side the harbor, so far out in fact, that they were in international waters. In normal circumstances, the Xoser would have been one of the first ships into the harbor, but these were anything but normal times.
The shipping manifest listed the Xoser as carrying perishable food items that had to keep in cold storage so they would get priority handling in the hot Egyptian sun. In truth the Xoser was illegally carrying eighty tons of OXBN high explosive, which is six times more powerful than dynamite, a Class A international felony punishable by a life sentence in the slammer. The captain of the Japanese constructed freighter was intensely nervous, as any sane person would be after sailing for three weeks with enough high explosives to destroy the Great Wall of China. Obviously, the timetable he'd been provided with had changed and nobody had notified him, which made him even more nervous. As he smoked his cigar, he stewed upon the fact that even though the boss told him that this was an essential part of the plan, the plans changed and now he now had no idea what to do with the cargo. He knew he was a sheep, and he was happy to be lead around with no idea that his often-illegal cargo used for unscrupulous activities, as long as the men who hired him paid handsomely.
However now as he was, cut off from his employer, an Englishman, he had no clue as to whether the boss was alive or not, so he went over the actions he could take now. The first option that came to mind was to report his cargo to the authorities and try to make a deal with them. This plan quickly flew out the window as he thought of the possible consequences, which painted for him a very un-rosy future in a prison. A second option was to try to act as if nothing was wrong and unload half the cargo at Alexandria as planned. Just as before, this course discarded when he remembered that now every container unloaded the customs officers inspected fully, with the crew and captain of the ship at gunpoint. Just as he decided to sail on to his second destination of Barcelona, Spain, a knife held by a masked figure slit his throat from behind. The Xoser and its deadly cargo left the approaches to Alexandria and sailed off to the west.
/SSGN 726 Ohio/, Shelter Dock 4X, King's Bay, Georgia
0430 GMT, 1 December 2001, (11:30 PM, 30 November 2001, EST)
This would be the first test of the newly refitted Ohio's capability to both patrol and make war. The defense department had refitted the Ohio from a ballistic missile platform into a guided missile launch platform. In place of the original twenty huge silos, behind the conning tower, there were now over five hundred smaller silos, which could hold any type of missile that Navy had in their stockpiles. This ship truly represented the next generation of the submersible naval combat vessel, one that is fast, well armed and armored and could engage targets on the land and in the air and sea. A week ago, the Ohio had been preparing for a demonstration for defense contractors, which would get them to build better missiles. However now, it was to sail under full steam to the Sulu Sea to thwart the possibility of a takeover of the Phillipines by Chinese military commanders. He would be there in three days provided nothing went wrong.
The skipper of this mighty vessel, Commander Bart Mancuso, was ready for some action. For the past three years, he had been training with a new crew in preparation for Operation COLD FLAME, a simulation of naval and air attacks on the eastern seaboard. However, that training which was to be a harmless exercise, now being put to test, in a true field of battle. As the last SM-3s, Harpoons and Tomahawks were loaded into their tubes; Mancuso gave the order 'rig ship for departure', which caused a flood of activity as seamen scrambled through the passageways to get to their posts. When the go-ahead came from the exterior weapons detail, the boat began silently to descend into the inky depths of the sea, and only when it was completely submerged did the majestic vessel motor out of the dock. These brave men of honor knew that the coming battles might claim their lives, but they also knew that by fighting those very battles, they would secure the world's freedom.
Clark AFB, Luzon Island, the Philippines
0430 GMT (12:30 PM Manila Standard Time), 1 December 2001
Gloomy hazel eyes looked out over the flight line, moving slowly over the newly arrived B-2A Spirit bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, made ready for combat missions across the face of the globe. The man these eyes belonged to had been assigned to this squadron for the past fifteen years, for which he and his wife had been very appreciative. Those fifteen years had seen the gradual fading of the pain caused by the loss of his only child. The pain faded but the memory never left, the memory of being told his son, his joy, was dead. When he first came to the United States with his red-headed wife, the pain was still fresh and it seemed that no amount of time could cause the sorrow to fade away, but it had. For just over twenty years, he and his wife had completely forsaken their old life in the magical world, cut all ties and burned all bridges, and hoped never to go back to the world that had put them through Hell. However, no man can forever escape his demons, no more than King Canute could stop the tides. The demons that had for so long been unable to find him and his wife suddenly reared their heads and this time there was no evading them.
He shook himself out of the horrible past and started to focus on the even worse present. As he looked over the weather report for the Sea of Japan, he grinned faintly; it seemed that Japan had once again been saved from destruction by a divine wind. A category 5 typhoon that made any type of amphibious landing or aerial assault impossible suddenly showed up 100 miles east of Tokyo, and it moved swiftly toward the Sea of Japan. This happened to be a stroke of extreme luck as it gave half of the pilots about a week to rest, and three days was plenty of time for the real heavy weapons to get to Clark. The rest of the pilots were not so lucky, they assigned to fly missions around Formosa, or Taiwan. Moreover, the weather in the South China Sea was perfect for amphibious operations and aerial sorties of all kinds. Right now, the only airborne defenses around Taiwan were Predator and GlobalHawk UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) with a pair of machine guns on each drone. If the Chinese came at that moment with strike aircraft, it would be like shooting spitballs at a freight train. Things were indeed bleak, but the hazel-eyed, black haired major general was grateful for the storm to the east of Japan.
A storm in the east
Camp Al-Shazarif, one hundred twenty-five kilometers inside the Iranian border
0037 GMT (4:07 AM Tehran Standard Time), 1 December 2001
The eyes of one Mohammad Zaquari looked out over the darkened desert in this, the largest training ground for Al Qaeda and the jihad in opposition to the west. The tents were tranquil at present, but before long they would be bustling with activity, as the dark lord's proxy would be stopping through to dole out instructions for the jihad. As dawn approached, the watch fires extinguished and new recruits began their daily prayers to Allah, and veteran jihadi began weapons training. The man assigned as the proxy between the dark lord and this particular camp was a Belgian ex-Red Beret christened Henry Cazeux, and he had a noteworthy rancor against the Americans. The jihadi would have even considered him one of their own if not for the actuality that he was an infidel, a Roman Catholic. He was not only a cunning and sadistic warrior, but he was also one of the prevalent suppliers of methamphetamines to the world at large, in consequence, he raked in huge amounts of cash for the dark lord.
When Henry Cazeux arrived in, what he considered, a pitiful camp in the middle of the worst fucking place on earth, he could not help but sneer in disgust at the desert rats his master was so magnanimously helping. He carried with him the stolen blueprints for the Iranian nuclear reactor near the Gulf of Aden. The dark lord wanted these jihadi to 'appropriate' radioactive waste grade material from the reactor complex, and then produce a dirty bomb that would spread radioactive waste over a huge area. Cazeux was exceedingly dubious that this... militia... could perform this mission up to the standards of his lord. Nevertheless, since the dark lord assigned him to this work personally, he would do this work to the best of his ability. He would rather report the camps position to the allies and have to work with these inferior beings.
As Zaquari looked over the plans, his mind filled with reservation and apprehension. Even though the Iranian government had issued no official statement regarding their position on the war, security forces all over the world beefed up just in case the dark lord attacked them. A few weeks ago, this mission would have been a cakewalk, but now it resembled more of a kamikaze mission than anything else did. Moreover, they could no longer bribe the guards to look the other way, not after the Hagia Sophia had destroyed, along with 800 souls inside. That was one of the few things that the fundamentalist government absolutely condemned, the destruction of a mosque and holy place. Even with the medium artillery the small band of jihadi would be able to get to the site in a couple of weeks, they would still face stiff resistance. Nevertheless, if Allah's will were for him and his men to die in this operation, then he would meet his death with open arms. After Cazeux left he began his daily training, but he also heaved a sigh of relief at having the crazy Belgian far away from him.
Yemeni freighter /King Xoser/, 20 kilometers north-northwest of Alexandria, Egypt.
0341 GMT (5:41 AM Local), 1 December 2001
Shipping in the Mediterranean had been chaotic since the dragon attacks, which proved that the enemy could strike both the land and sea. Ships had been frantically to get any port, in the hope that military air defenses would somewhat protect them. Even during the best of times, the port at Alexandria was a nightmarish place to navigate, with a relatively shallow bottom and protected archeological sites where no commercial traffic could pass overhead. However now, it looked like the freeway into Los Angeles at rush hour, in other words ships were end to end and there was a huge backup in the approaches to the port. The Xoser was one of those unfortunate ships stuck far out side the harbor, so far out in fact, that they were in international waters. In normal circumstances, the Xoser would have been one of the first ships into the harbor, but these were anything but normal times.
The shipping manifest listed the Xoser as carrying perishable food items that had to keep in cold storage so they would get priority handling in the hot Egyptian sun. In truth the Xoser was illegally carrying eighty tons of OXBN high explosive, which is six times more powerful than dynamite, a Class A international felony punishable by a life sentence in the slammer. The captain of the Japanese constructed freighter was intensely nervous, as any sane person would be after sailing for three weeks with enough high explosives to destroy the Great Wall of China. Obviously, the timetable he'd been provided with had changed and nobody had notified him, which made him even more nervous. As he smoked his cigar, he stewed upon the fact that even though the boss told him that this was an essential part of the plan, the plans changed and now he now had no idea what to do with the cargo. He knew he was a sheep, and he was happy to be lead around with no idea that his often-illegal cargo used for unscrupulous activities, as long as the men who hired him paid handsomely.
However now as he was, cut off from his employer, an Englishman, he had no clue as to whether the boss was alive or not, so he went over the actions he could take now. The first option that came to mind was to report his cargo to the authorities and try to make a deal with them. This plan quickly flew out the window as he thought of the possible consequences, which painted for him a very un-rosy future in a prison. A second option was to try to act as if nothing was wrong and unload half the cargo at Alexandria as planned. Just as before, this course discarded when he remembered that now every container unloaded the customs officers inspected fully, with the crew and captain of the ship at gunpoint. Just as he decided to sail on to his second destination of Barcelona, Spain, a knife held by a masked figure slit his throat from behind. The Xoser and its deadly cargo left the approaches to Alexandria and sailed off to the west.
/SSGN 726 Ohio/, Shelter Dock 4X, King's Bay, Georgia
0430 GMT, 1 December 2001, (11:30 PM, 30 November 2001, EST)
This would be the first test of the newly refitted Ohio's capability to both patrol and make war. The defense department had refitted the Ohio from a ballistic missile platform into a guided missile launch platform. In place of the original twenty huge silos, behind the conning tower, there were now over five hundred smaller silos, which could hold any type of missile that Navy had in their stockpiles. This ship truly represented the next generation of the submersible naval combat vessel, one that is fast, well armed and armored and could engage targets on the land and in the air and sea. A week ago, the Ohio had been preparing for a demonstration for defense contractors, which would get them to build better missiles. However now, it was to sail under full steam to the Sulu Sea to thwart the possibility of a takeover of the Phillipines by Chinese military commanders. He would be there in three days provided nothing went wrong.
The skipper of this mighty vessel, Commander Bart Mancuso, was ready for some action. For the past three years, he had been training with a new crew in preparation for Operation COLD FLAME, a simulation of naval and air attacks on the eastern seaboard. However, that training which was to be a harmless exercise, now being put to test, in a true field of battle. As the last SM-3s, Harpoons and Tomahawks were loaded into their tubes; Mancuso gave the order 'rig ship for departure', which caused a flood of activity as seamen scrambled through the passageways to get to their posts. When the go-ahead came from the exterior weapons detail, the boat began silently to descend into the inky depths of the sea, and only when it was completely submerged did the majestic vessel motor out of the dock. These brave men of honor knew that the coming battles might claim their lives, but they also knew that by fighting those very battles, they would secure the world's freedom.
Clark AFB, Luzon Island, the Philippines
0430 GMT (12:30 PM Manila Standard Time), 1 December 2001
Gloomy hazel eyes looked out over the flight line, moving slowly over the newly arrived B-2A Spirit bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, made ready for combat missions across the face of the globe. The man these eyes belonged to had been assigned to this squadron for the past fifteen years, for which he and his wife had been very appreciative. Those fifteen years had seen the gradual fading of the pain caused by the loss of his only child. The pain faded but the memory never left, the memory of being told his son, his joy, was dead. When he first came to the United States with his red-headed wife, the pain was still fresh and it seemed that no amount of time could cause the sorrow to fade away, but it had. For just over twenty years, he and his wife had completely forsaken their old life in the magical world, cut all ties and burned all bridges, and hoped never to go back to the world that had put them through Hell. However, no man can forever escape his demons, no more than King Canute could stop the tides. The demons that had for so long been unable to find him and his wife suddenly reared their heads and this time there was no evading them.
He shook himself out of the horrible past and started to focus on the even worse present. As he looked over the weather report for the Sea of Japan, he grinned faintly; it seemed that Japan had once again been saved from destruction by a divine wind. A category 5 typhoon that made any type of amphibious landing or aerial assault impossible suddenly showed up 100 miles east of Tokyo, and it moved swiftly toward the Sea of Japan. This happened to be a stroke of extreme luck as it gave half of the pilots about a week to rest, and three days was plenty of time for the real heavy weapons to get to Clark. The rest of the pilots were not so lucky, they assigned to fly missions around Formosa, or Taiwan. Moreover, the weather in the South China Sea was perfect for amphibious operations and aerial sorties of all kinds. Right now, the only airborne defenses around Taiwan were Predator and GlobalHawk UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) with a pair of machine guns on each drone. If the Chinese came at that moment with strike aircraft, it would be like shooting spitballs at a freight train. Things were indeed bleak, but the hazel-eyed, black haired major general was grateful for the storm to the east of Japan.
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