In the Line of Fire
The old world is dying. The new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.
-Antonio Gramsci, leader of the Italian Communist Party (attributed)
September 1st, 1995 - Sinai Peninsula, Egypt - 1500 hours
Captain James Solomon would have happily sold his soul for one or both of two things: air conditioning and bullets. He had neither.
What he did have, aside from his soul, was a boxy, rusty, wheeled armoured personnel carrier (APC) with no weapons and no air conditioning and with thirty years of service creaking in its frame. He also had a team consisting of himself and five nearly unarmed people, and a mission taking them into the middle of a rocky desert which, on this sunny day, had a temperature of over 91 degrees Fahrenheit. It felt even hotter inside the noisy APC, since Solomon and his team were packed in tightly with each other, bouncing around on hard metal benches as the vehicle rumbled through the desert. Scorpions were at home in this part of the world, but Solomon wasn't.
According to Omar Waked, their local translator, they were lucky. It was September, and the Sinai was one of the colder parts of Egypt. People didn't volunteer for peacekeeping duty with the Global Defence Agency (GDA) if they craved glamour.
"Captain, permission to speak freely," Carson groaned, taking off his helmet to wipe sweat from his buzz-cut dark hair and tanned skin. He took the wireless earbuds connected to his Walkman out of his ears as well, muffled Wu-Tang faintly audible even over the APC's engine.
Sitting across from Solomon, Carson was the only other American in the team, a brawny football enthusiast who'd freely admitted to enlisting out of boredom and volunteering for peacekeeping duty out of curiosity. The yellow-brown desert camo fatigues he was wearing were stained with dust and sweat, matching the rest of the team and the APC's own paint job.
Solomon drank a deep swallow of tepid water from his canteen before answering. "Granted."
"Why the Hell didn't I stay in California?" Carson sighed with exaggerated tragedy, half-joking but fully fed up. "I coulda been surfing right now."
Everyone in the APC chuckled as Carson said what they were all thinking on some level. Solomon even heard a snort from Private Rahman, the APC's lanky Bangladeshi driver, and Rahman almost never laughed. Lieutenant Toyama, Solomon's Japanese aide and the team's medic, clapped her hands over her mouth and hunched forward as she stifled her giggle, her dark bangs bouncing. Solomon couldn't see the reaction of Sergeant Singh, the burly Canadian up in the APCs turret, but could picture the bright smile Singh would likely be flashing as he kept watch. The submachine gun slung across Singh's shoulders was the closest thing to a real weapon they were permitted on this observation mission.
Solomon gave a tight smile, then rolled his shoulders back and lifted his head to speak, keeping his words steady despite the growling engine of their bumping, rumbling ride.
"You're here, Specialist, because you're a good person. And like any good person, you want to make the world a better place, where innocent people don't get hurt. That means you want to help the peace process succeed in ending this insurgency so nice people like Omar here-" he nodded to their translator, who grinned with tea-stained teeth - "can live safe and happy with their kids. With me so far?"
"Sure," Carson said, leaning back and popping a bright pink stick of gum into his mouth from one of his uniform's pockets. "I love kids."
Solomon kept speaking, secretly relishing the way his voice resounded in the cramped, rattling space of the APC, the way it effortlessly commanded attention with each word. It helped that he was tall and well-built, with a steady gaze, handsome features, and flawless dark skin, but the voice was his cheat code, his shortcut to commanding others. Ever since his voice broke, James Solomon had possessed what his West Point classmates had nicknamed 'The Voice of God', a gift that helped him wield authority over older and more experienced troops. Or in this case, motivating skeptical peacekeepers.
"And since Section Five of the Aswan Protocols mandates that all weapons involved in a civil conflict be disarmed and accounted for during the peace process," he continued, "the reported weapons cache in this desert is, according to our intel, in clear violation of this sworn treaty. That's why we're heading out to inspect the site, that's why we're sweating in this APC, and that's why you, Sergeant, are nobly sacrificing your surfing for the greater good of world peace."
"You speak very well, Captain," Toyama remarked lightly beside him, barely a hint of accent to her English. "With a voice like yours, you should be on CNN."
"The Captain? A journalist?" Rahman called back from the driver's seat, voice faint over the growl of the engine. "There's no need to insult the man!"
That netted another round of chuckles. Like many soldiers, GDA peacekeepers didn't have the highest opinion of the media. Depending on which newspapers or blogs one read, GDA was a fascist aggressor, a Communist pawn, or simply useless, corrupt and weak. Sometimes all three.
"Just one more question then," Carson said. "If we're here for world peace, and we're going to find some deadly shit someone wants to stay hidden, why the hell don't we all got guns? Not that I doubt Singh could singlehandedly waste anyone comin' after us!"
He called up at Singh's legs, the only part of him visible from his perch in the turret. There was no response from Singh, who was doubtless focused on scanning the horizon for threats.
"That's simple. We're guests in someone else's country, and the local government doesn't want heavily-armed foreign soldiers running around their territory."
Solomon tried to pitch his voice in the sweet spot, showing the team he empathized with how bullshit things were while making it firm and clear that there was no point complaining about it. He had to present it to Carson like gravity, like entropy. Nothing to be done but their duty.
"Even though they asked for our help." Carson was not impressed.
"Even though they asked for our help," Solomon said. "That's exactly how it is."
Solomon knew there was no point telling Carson that he had raised hell over their orders before coming out here, that he thought it all stunk, that they could have at least been given a helicopter instead of being sent on a road trip through the wasteland. The team had to believe that their leader believed in the mission, or morale would go to Hell along with everything else.
"Guess that's the kinda shit we all sign up for," Carson remarked. "Okay, Captain. Next time Grandma asks why the Hell I'm out here playing peacekeeper instead of helping Uncle Sam avenge New York, I'll tell her all about world peace and Omar's kids."
Solomon kept his face impassive, wondering whether he should share how much he understood. His older brother hadn't spoken to him in a year over James' refusal to quit GDA and join him on his combat deployment with Special Forces. His mother's quietly puzzled support, as though her Jimmy had suddenly abandoned his path to pursue a career in busking, was almost as bad.
"If it is worth anything, I am very glad you are all here," Omar said quietly. "It was much worse before you came. Much, much worse. All of you, you help stop the terrorists your own way."
Carson nodded, looked thoughtfully at Omar, then put his earbuds back in and returned his attention to his Walkman, leaving his sweat-sticky helmet off. Solomon took this as a sign that his little speech had done the trick. Hopefully his little team of peacekeepers would stay motivated until they reached the reported cache - still at least an hour away, if Agent Delphi's map was accurate. If their timing was right, they'd arrive around mealtime, adding an element of surprise to their inspection of the site.
As the talk died down, Solomon allowed his gaze to drift to the tiny viewport by his head that was his only window on the world outside the APC. The Sinai rolled by outside the right side of the vehicle, stone and sand and scraggly green scrub, broken only by a rocky twenty-foot rise about two hundred metres away, running parallel to the APC's path.
Something flashed on the peak of the rise. Solomon's breath caught as he spotted a crouched figure with a tube on his shoulder, registered a streak of white smoke rocketing toward them, and heard Singh screaming "RPG! Right side!"
"Brace!" Solomon shouted, and planted his feet and grabbed the wall. He was about to say something else, but then the world turned upside down in a roar of noise, pressure, and heat.
Ranger School had trained him for these moments, and that training kicked in now, guiding him as he pushed past the blurred vision and ringing ears and pain all over to focus himself on what was happening and what he needed to do.
The world hadn't turned upside down, he had. Solomon scrambled up from the floor of the APC where he'd been thrown. He heard full-auto gunfire, bullets rapidly clanging against the vehicle's armour, and people shouting. The APC's engine had stopped. Something red and sticky dripped down on his shoulder, and he looked up to see Sergeant Singh, slumped dead up in the turret with blood streaming from his opened head.
He shook his head to clear it, and took in the rest of his team. Toyama was moving, sharp and quick, kneeling to check over Carson. Carson was sprawled on the floor. His neck was lolling at an impossible angle and his head was pulpy and swollen. The wet pink gum he'd been chewing slipped out of his slack mouth, and Toyama looked at Solomon without saying anything. He could still faintly hear the music playing from Carson's Walkman earbuds, now lying on the floor.
Solomon stood up as Toyama moved to Omar, crunching the earbuds under her boots. The civilian was curled up on the floor shivering and muttering. Solomon thought he could make out the words of the Shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, repeated over and over again. It was hard to tell over the constant rattle of bullets against their armour, like storm-driven hail against a window.
"Captain!" Rahman clambered back from the driver's seat, jamming on his helmet, his dark eyes furious. He had the ruggedized satphone - their link to the UN base near El-Arish- slung over his shoulder. "They got our wheels - we're immobile. The radio is destroyed."
It was Solomon's first time under fire, but he hadn't been trained to hesitate. "Drop the ramp," he ordered. "We're moving before they hit us again."
As he spoke, he reached up to Singh's body, ignoring the blood running down his arms from the dead man's wound, and stripped him of the MP-5 submachine gun and spare magazines. Aside from their sidearms, the MP-5 was their only real protection. They were supposed to be here as observers, not facing a firefight.
Rahman acted immediately. The ramp of the APC clanged as it fell to the rocky floor of the desert, and the team made ready to exit.
Solomon shouldered the MP-5, flipped off the safety, and yelled "Covering fire! Everyone move behind the vehicle!"
Then he stepped out under the Egyptian Sun with the weapon raised and pointing toward the rocky rise where the attack had come from.
He saw that they were fucked.
A green pickup truck with brown slabs of homemade armour bolted onto its sides was rolling down the slope toward them - a Technical. The heavy machine gun mounted on its back was manned and blazing. Behind it, he could see muzzle flashes from at least ten men with AK-47 assault rifles firing from cover among the rocks, and the long tube of the RPG launcher sprouting a bulbous warhead as its wielder readied another shot at the helpless APC. All the men wore civilian clothing with splashes of green - here a green beret, there a green armband, a green bandana tied around a face.
"It's the GLA!" Solomon shouted.
He crouched by the ramp, sighted on the RPG trooper and fired, the chatter of the MP-5 pathetically slight and thin against the thunderous rip of the Technical's Soviet-made 'Dushka' heavy machine gun and the hammering chorus of the rebels' rifles. He was massively outgunned and firing in real combat for the first time in his life, at the extreme edge of the MP-5's two-hundred metre effective range.
He hit with his first burst. The RPG trooper dropped out of sight among the rocks, reflexively clenching his weapon's trigger. Solomon heard the whoosh as the rocket soared up into the air, leaving a crazily corkscrewing smoke trail behind before it burst over the desert like a firework.
It was his first time killing another human being. All he felt was a surge of deep, fierce satisfaction at taking down one of the bastards who had killed Singh and Carson, and an adrenaline-fueled hunger to kill more fighters of the so-called 'Global Liberation Army' who had caused so much violence across the world.
Solomon suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder, hauling him backwards just as puffs of sand marking GLA bullet impacts started converging on him. He allowed himself to be guided, moving with Lieutenant Toyama as she pulled her commanding officer to the other side of the disabled APC, showing surprising strength for a 120-pound woman. When he looked in her eyes, he saw the same spark of fury that he felt in his.
They slumped against the side of the APC, sheltering from the hail of bullets for a moment. Omar was already kneeling there, throwing up yellow bile, and Rahman-
"No," Solomon breathed.
Rahman must have been hit exiting the APC, despite Solomon's effort at cover fire. Ragged red holes riddled his torso, and red stains were soaking down his uniform as he breathed, jagged and shallow with his eyes half-closed, propped limply against the vehicle. Toyama went to him immediately. Solomon was gratified to see she'd thought to grab the aid kit from the vehicle - Why didn't I order that? He thought - but he knew Rahman wouldn't survive without immediate surgery. And they were a long way from the nearest hospital.
"Bastards," he hissed.
The sound of gunfire was getting closer, the Technical keeping them suppressed while the GLA rebels advanced on their position. Solomon knew he had to slow them down before they got overrun.
"Toyama, I'm going!"
Solomon edged toward the front side of the APC, then went prone and rolled out of cover, feeling hot sand burning against his body as he sighted the MP-5 on the source of the machine-gun fire. He saw the GLA militant manning the gun as the Technical closed in - a hundred metres away now - just as the weapon swiveled to shoot him.
The gunner was too slow. Solomon let him have it, emptying the rest of the MP-5's 30-round magazine into him and his vehicle, and saw his enemy topple off the back of the pickup while the windows of the Technical cracked and shattered. He couldn't confirm whether he'd gotten the driver though, as the whizz of bullets overhead told him the enemy infantry were getting a bead on him. He rolled back behind cover moments before rounds smacked into the sand where he'd been, and sat back against the APC, panting as he ejected the spent magazine and reloaded the weapon.
Toyama was there, her uniform red up to the elbows in Rahman's blood, frustrated tears in her eyes while Rahman's had closed forever. Looking at the driver's body bleeding next to him, something broke in Omar.
"la aistatie," the translator cried out to no one and everyone. "Ia aistatie!"
Solomon had a sudden, terrifying premonition. "Omar, don't try it!"
Omar didn't listen or was past hearing. He darted from the safety of the APC wreck, too fast for Toyama's lunging hands to catch him, stumbling in the sand as he ran for his life. He made it five steps before they shot him in the back, and he fell limp among the desert scrub.
Toyama immediately made to go after him. It was Solomon's turn to grab her shoulder and haul her backwards.
"No, Lieutenant," he said firmly, putting everything he had into the Voice of God. "He's gone. I need you to get on the satphone-"
The world turned upside down again. His ears popped as a wave of air pressure roared over them, driving a cloud of stinging sand along with it. Chunks of hot, jagged metal rained down around them, shrapnel from what had been the side of the APC before the GLA blew it open with another RPG.
Because of course one of them went and picked up the dropped RPG launcher, Solomon seethed as he sat up and spat sand out of his mouth. They're not going to abandon their best weapon.
You idiot. You've gotten your entire team killed and now you're going to die.
He met Toyama's eyes. They reflected the fire beginning to blaze in the husk of the APC, consuming the bodies of Carson and Singh. She held up the shattered lump of plastic that had been the satphone, their only tie to the world beyond this damned desert. Then she drew her sidearm, switched off its safety, and chambered a round.
Solomon nodded. There was no need for words, and no thought of surrender. The Lieutenant swung around the rear of the APC wreck while Captain James Solomon popped out next to the front to make his last stand.
The enemy was close enough that he could hear their voices, calling out in Arabic and English - "The higher order shall reign!" One of them was fifty metres away, confidently advancing while spraying rifle fire from his hip. Solomon liked to think he saw surprise behind the rebel's thick dark goggles as he drilled three bullets into his chest, sending him sprawling lifeless on the sand.
But there were more behind him, and more behind them. Solomon counted at least eight muzzle flashes aimed at him, saw the rebels spreading out to flank their position from both sides. He heard dozens of bullets slamming the metal of the burning APC, and the crack of near-misses passing by his head. He felt his nerve break as he emptied the rest of the MP-5's magazine in a long, sweeping spray, thought he saw another figure fall, and then ducked back, cursing himself for wasting ammo.
Toyama was there, panting as she slammed a fresh magazine into her Beretta pistol. Blood was flowing from a wound in her upper left arm, but she didn't seem to notice.
"I think I injured one of them," she said, grimacing. "Maybe." Sidearms against automatic rifles was not a fair fight.
"Last mag," Solomon reported as he reloaded. "Let's make it count. Lieutenant, it's been an honour."
He had the dim thought that he should make peace with his death, maybe think about his family or his country one last time, but found that he didn't care. There was no fear, no sadness, no distractions. Only one objective: destroy the enemy.
Captain Solomon popped out of cover for what he was sure would be the last time, and took aim.
The enemy was gone.
He frowned, swept the area with his weapon. He saw the Technical raising a cloud of dust behind it as it drove away, the remaining rebels crowding its back as they rode on it, leaving behind their dead.
He barely had time to become confused before the buzz of engines and crunching of rock under wheels announced new vehicles on the scene, coming up behind the APC the way the peacekeepers had come on their ill-fated mission. Turning to face them, Solomon understood. The armed blue-gray sand buggies approaching were flying the black-and-red flags of the current Egyptian government, the Fist of Allah Council that the GLA had been fighting for years.
Solomon allowed himself to exhale, took a deep breath, and lowered his weapon as he put the safety on. He nodded to Toyama, who let out an incredulous high-pitched laugh, the laugh of someone who can't quite believe they're alive but isn't going to ask too many questions.
The four buggies pulled up around the destroyed APC, forming a square. A man stepped out of the lead vehicle, flanked by tall bodyguards, wearing a long white shemagh on his head that flattered his features despite not matching his green camouflage uniform. Solomon frowned, and Toyama stopped laughing. The man was tall, movie-star handsome, and smiling far too broadly for someone who was surrounded by fire and bodies.
General Kassad was one of the top power brokers in the region, nicknamed 'Prince' Kassad for the dashing and sometimes scandalous figure he cut in the casinos and villas of Sharm El Sheikh and Alexandria. At 34, he wasn't much older than Solomon, his unusual name was most likely an alias, and he was Libyan rather than Egyptian by birth. Despite all this, he had ascended the ranks of power in Egypt like a spider climbing its web, surrounded by a haze of positive press and a darker cloud of rumour.
Everyone knew that bad things happened to Prince Kassad's enemies- beatings, assassinations, disappearances - but no one could prove anything.
Waving his hand, Prince Kassad called orders to his troops in Arabic as they climbed out of their buggies, then repeated himself in heavily-accented English for the benefit of the surviving peacekeepers. "Secure the area! The enemy may be near!"
Kassad's soldiers moved swiftly to comply, spreading out in pairs to check bodies and collect weapons, and Solomon narrowed his eyes. These men looked sharper, better disciplined, and better equipped than the dusty, unshaven, surly conscripts he associated with the local government. And since when did Egyptian troops wear crisp blue-gray uniforms, carry pristine-looking M-16s, or drive shiny new buggies armed with turreted M-60 machine guns?
Prince Kassad turned his attention to Solomon, hands outstretched in operatic sympathy, looking like his heart might break for their plight. "Ah, my friends, it is so good to see you've survived. Such a pity we could not arrive in time for the rest of your team… we learned you were heading into danger, but it seems we were too late. The militia here are so very hostile to trespassers… Are you hurt?"
Solomon looked at Toyama, who bent down, wiped Rahman's blood off her hands in the sand, then headed over to the nearest Buggy to get the bullet wound in her arm looked at. Kassad was looking at him as though expecting something, eyebrow slightly raised.
He took a deep breath, trying to center himself and calm his battle-ragged nerves, and summoned the Voice of God.
"Thank you, General. You arrived just in time. If you know about our mission, then maybe you can give us a ride the rest of the way to our objective."
People had died to find that weapons cache. He wasn't walking away without at least looking on it with his own eyes. But Kassad was shaking his head before Solomon finished speaking, wagging a finger at him like a disapproving teacher.
"No, no, no. Regrettably impossible, Captain Solomon. A tragedy, that you were sent all the way out here before you got the news." He paused to let Solomon's eyes widen before continuing.
"You see, there has just today been a change in policy in Cairo. The Council has decided that our GDA guests are no longer needed to support our country. We will be formally asking the United Nations to withdraw your mission tomorrow, in fact."
Solomon tried to keep his mouth from dropping open, and only half succeeded. He could still smell Singh and Carson's bodies cooking in the burning APC, even as Kassad's troops sprayed it with a hissing fire extinguisher.
"You're kicking us out?"
Kassad shrugged. "The whims of politics, eh my friend? What can poor soldiers like us do but obey?"
"What about the insurgency?" Solomon was trying to keep from yelling. He'd learned long ago that you lost if you let them make you show your anger.
"Ah, the time of division is ending! Our country now sees with one vision, one purpose. But come," Kassad added before Solomon could protest further. "We will retrieve your team's remains and take you back to your base. You must rest after your ordeal - you have a long flight ahead of you, after all."
Looking at the slight smirk on Kassad's lips as he spoke, Solomon knew. He knew for certain that Kassad had been involved in the ambush, that he was working with the GLA, that Singh and Carson and Rahman and Omar were dead because of him.
He also knew that he wouldn't be able to prove any of it. Because of the rules and bureaucracy that the UN and GDA operated under, he didn't have authority to do a single goddamn thing in Egypt without the consent of the host government that Kassad spoke for, nothing except tuck his tail and slink away.
But as the APC burned behind him and Kassad's men started guiding him to the buggy that would take him and Toyama back to face the consequences of this disaster, he promised himself. Captain James Solomon would not forget the lives lost here today, and he would not rest until he had found a way to make things right.
A/N: In Command and Conquer, GDI is the world's most powerful army, a standing UN military backed by the most powerful nations that ultimately becomes a world government. In real life, particularly in the 90s, UN peacekeeping forces frequently deal with tight budgets, minimal armaments, and restrictive rules as they serve in the world's most dangerous places. It seems in E9-verse, the Global Defense *Agency* is a shadow of what it is in the main Tiberium timeline. Maybe this has something to do with the information Kane received in the last chapter?
General (currently Captain) James Solomon is the head of GDI in Tiberium Sun, and is heavily implied to be the player Commander of the GDI campaign in Tiberium Dawn. Being portrayed by the inimitable James Earl Jones means he's playing on easy mode when it comes to projecting authority. According to canon, Solomon completed Ranger School, hence his combat proficiency in this chapter. My research on this training indicates that Ranger School is basically a 62-day legal murder attempt that soldiers volunteer for.
I'm sure I'm taking some artistic liberties here with Solomon and Carson's divided sense of duty - in real life, very few soldiers would choose to keep serving with the UN instead of going back to their country after it had been attacked, and that's assuming they would be given a choice in the first place. More details to come in the next chapter about what the GLA did in New York to set the USA after them, and the dilemma facing GDA-aligned American soldiers like Solomon.
General 'Prince' Kassad's ties to the GLA and other powers will be explored later. My research indicates that 'Kassad' isn't a real Arab name, which adds to the air of intrigue around the Stealth General who is playing all the angles in Egypt and beyond. Readers familiar with Tiberian Dawn may recognize the 'Fist of Allah' name.
According to Google Translate, Omar Waked's last words are 'I can't!' Apologies to any Arabic speakers if I botched that one.
Lieutenant Toyama's name is taken from a character in Red Alert 3, but she's otherwise an original. RA3's ultra-whacky style will generally not be incorporated into Echo Nine's version of C&C.
The version of the 1990s portrayed in this story is a technological and social mess, as is often the case with Command and Conquer. Red Alert established that GPS technology, invulnerability devices, seismic weaponry, lightning weapons and teleportation were all invented in the late 40s - early 50s. Decades later, some of this technology remains top secret and in military hands only (particularly the Chronosphere), but information technology, space flight, globalization and social norms are far in advance of where they were in 'our' version of the 90s. Which is why Carson is listening to digitized music on a Walkman with wireless earbuds! He even got it at Radio Shack.
The very first C&C game originally released in September 1995, which is why I've picked that date as this story's official start.
Hope you enjoyed the chapter, thank you for reading!