True Faith and Allegiance

And more important than anything else, there would be no way President Jack Ryan could avoid a full military deployment to combat the powerful force that had made Middle America look so unsafe, and made this nation of infidels look so impotent.

Al-Matari did not return to the Chicago safe house on North Winchester, nor did the other three men. No, they each took their own cab to the same bar in Pilsen, and then, when their drivers had gone, they walked into the bar, out through the rear exit, and climbed into two vehicles parked there.

Each vehicle contained four Uzis, one thousand rounds of ammunition, and two shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles.

They were out of the city by two a.m. Chicago had been a success, but Chicago was behind them now.

Now it was time for all four men to converge on Washington, D.C., where more infidel victims awaited them.

65

The President of the United States stood in front of a roomful of reporters, like a target in a shooting gallery. It was nine a.m. on a Sunday, all the news shows were covering this live, and the twenty-four-hour networks would run a simultaneous feed of the carnage in Chicago on one half of the screen while the President spoke on the other half.

Ryan started with prepared remarks. He’d long ago banned the use of the cliché “shocked and saddened” by his speechwriters, but since he’d written the majority of today’s opening statement, he’d realized how hard it was to avoid the phrase.

After an expression of grief and horror, and a promise the government would not rest until the attacks in the United States by Abu Musa al-Matari stopped, he opened the floor for questions.

A reporter for CBS raised her hand. When Ryan called on her she said, “In light of the Islamic State’s ability to bring the war to America, do you plan to put boots on the ground in Iraq and Syria to take the war back to them?”

“Shelly, as you know, we have boots on the ground in Iraq and Syria. Special mission units are over there, as well as aircraft of all shapes and sizes and the support elements for them. We are partnering with our coalition, and our strategy is working. The geographical footprint of the Islamic State in the region is shrinking, as is their total number of fighters.

“But as they lose ground, they must gain headlines. Headlines are far easier to achieve than battlefield victories. The ISIS operatives in America at the moment are few in number, but their effect is well out of proportion to their physical strength. If they are not seen as dangerous and powerful, ISIS will stop pulling in fresh meat, new cannon fodder, and it will not survive as anything other than a bad idea.

“Look at what we’ve done in the past three years. We’ve killed and captured top Islamic State leadership. We’ve committed offensive airpower, and special operations troops, CIA, DIA, and other intel agencies are on the ground there. We’ve encouraged our NATO partners to be more engaged in that region.

“We’ve funded some of the Kurdistan militias and the Iraqi Security Force, trained them up, given them state-of-the-art communications equipment.

“We are winning the land war against the Islamic State without putting a brigade of Marines in Baghdad and sending them west into ISIS-held territory. This strategy is working better than any other plan out there, and the reason it is working over there is exactly the reason they are attacking over here.

“Last night’s attack is part of a trap they are trying to lay for us, to get us to move in numbers to their home turf. But we aren’t falling for it.”

Shelly followed up. “So, again, no new call to increase military operations in the Middle East?”

Ryan looked at the woman for a moment. “Shelly, you and your network have come out against literally every military act I have ever ordered in my time as President. You’ve been against every CIA initiative that came to light when I ran the CIA. Suddenly it seems as if you are a proponent of a massive land war in the Middle East.”

Shelly did not reply.

“No… we will not give them their land war. We will fight them with both resistance and resilience.”

He next called on a reporter for CNN, a woman he knew hated him and everything he stood for. She’d made a name for herself subtly and not so subtly editorializing under the guise of straight news, and all her opinions ran counter to Ryan’s policies. “What do you say to those who simply suggest they hate us for what we do to them? That the very nature of our attacks on them have caused them to finally come over here as a way to defend themselves? As you know, they have been carefully selecting military and intelligence targets. Targets which, you would agree, America itself considers fair game in war. How do you reply to those who say simply that if we just left them alone, they would leave us alone?”

Ryan said, “Juliet, you are with CNN, you have spent years working international postings, am I right about that?”