Chasm Waxing: A Startup, Cyber-Thriller (38 page)

Hadi was counting the
Caliphate spec op forces he could make out. “There’s about 30
Daesh. And I count eight pick-ups. I can’t believe a
force
of 30 men
took out 125.”

“
The fight was over before
it began,” said Rahmati. “Whatever the Immersives did to take out
all that armor scared the Syrians—literally to death. They
should’ve known that the Daesh doesn’t take prisoners. Rapid,
concentrated firepower almost always defeats absolute strength.
That was the secret to Hitler’s blitzkrieg.

“
Here’s what we’re going
to do Immortals. Let’s quietly pass Tal Azan and go about 15 miles
down the dirt road. There’s
an
excellent
line of trees we can use to set
a trap. As Daesh absconds with our e
quipment
to Raqqa, we’re going to
ambush them.” The road from Tal Azan ran east-west to
Raqqa.

“
Let’s lay all the
anti-tank mines we have. We’re going to try to take out as many
pickups as we can. Make sure you place the mines in the pattern
we’ve practiced for Daesh’s vehicles.
Try
to anticipate the dispersal
pattern of the pickups after the
first
HiLux
is hit. And let’s stagger our fast-attack
vehicles.
Remember our
training. Space yourselves accordingly.

“
Your arcs of fire are the
key to this mission—this battle will be hot. Don’t shoot each
other! Our .
50-cals
will have to take out their
.50-
cals
.
It’s eight against five,
but you’re better than Daesh.
Every other
fast-attack vehicle
is
equipped
with a portable, anti-tank
missile launcher. Make sure you have those ready in case they
happen to move any of the tracked vehicles. They all look unusable,
but you never know.”

Rahmati addressed the drone operator.
“Keep the drone up. I know its signal can’t go any farther than
about three miles. So maintain radio contact and update me when
they leave. Then hide. We’ll pick you up after our successful
operation, inshallah.”

An hour later, the
Immortals had accomplished all of Rahmati’s orders. The
mines
were laid
and
buried
. The vehicles were all concealed
in the tree lines. Camouflage netting further obfuscated the lines
of the
fast-attack vehicles
looking down on the road.
The media team’s
machine was stationed 30 yards behind Rahmati’s position. Rahmati
ordered them to launch another drone.

Rahmati was second furthest east of
the direction from where he expected the mine detonations.
Rahmati’s group consisted of Hadi, one of the quad riders, and a
media team member holding a portable TV camera.

The drone operator
watching Tal Azan radioed Rahmati. “They’ve finished loading
up,
and I think
they are getting ready to move out. They’ve stripped all the
weapons and ammunition they can carry. It looks like all the
pickups have running boards and
handrails. That will allow them to
fit
more
plunder
in the truck beds. They’ve
hitched
four howitzers to the Toyotas.
They’re also taking two, fully-loaded KamAZ Mustangs.” KamAZ
Mustangs were Russian heavy cargo trucks—military
semi-trucks.

“
Roger,” replied Rahmati.
“
At least,
they’re going to be weighed down by all our equipment.”
Rahmati radioed his Immortals. He relayed all the information.
“Let’s try to take out the Mustang drivers with headshots. I’d
rather not blow up our side’s weapons and provisions.”

“
They’re moving out—7
Toyotas and 2 Mustangs. No armor,” radioed the drone
operator.

Rahmati told the Immortals
to be ready for action in the next 20 to 30 minutes. He had
assigned the other quad rider to a western-most position, about a
mile in front of the first, fast-attack vehicle hiding in the tree
line. His job was to recon the
convoy
and indicate when he spied the
first Daesh
vehicle
.

Then came the radio call that changed
everything.

“
Commander Rahmati, we’ve
got a problem.”

It was from the Immortal
crew furthest east, closest to the direction of Raqqa. “There’s a
huge dust cloud approaching rapidly. From
its
speed, I’d say it’s more
Caliphate in a bunch of pickups. It looks like
15-20 SUVs. They’re barreling in on our
position
. I’d guess they’re traveling at
70-80 miles per hour.”

“
Roger,” replied Rahmati,
turning his head towards Raqqa. He also saw the swelling dust
cloud. Rahmati tried to remain calm and keep his wits. The numbers
were the first things that raced through his mind.

There were 30 Immersives,
the Caliphate’s most elite fighters, closing in on his position
from the west. From the east, another group of Caliphate—probably
numbering 75 to 100 men—was rapidly approaching. At a minimum,
they’d have to deal with well over a dozen .50-cals and perhaps
over
120 men,
armed with assault rifles.

Rahmati called headquarters. “Any
update on that air support?”

After a reply that seemed
to take forever, the
Russian
speaker answered,
“Nyet.”

“
Damn Russians!” exploded
Rahmati.

“
Muhammad, we’d better get
out of here,” pleaded Hadi. “We can regroup in Aleppo and come back
with a stronger force, complete with armor and air
support.”

Rahmati contemplated the
situation. He looked over his shoulder at the TV camera. “No.
Immortals, tonight we either obtain victory or become martyrs. If
we become
martyrs
, I pray that God will accept
each and every one of us into paradise, based upon our actions in
this battle. But, I’m not planning on any of us being martyrs,
inshallah. Remember the odds against the Prophet at the Battle of
Badr!

“
I’m sending a
quad
down the line
to pick up the anti-tank
weapons. He can probably carry two at a
time,
if one of you rides with
him. He’s going to drop off the missiles with the Immortals
closest
to
Raqqa. Go!”

The anti-tank missile
system was a man-portable variant of the
Kornet
-EM. Each
fire-and-forget
rocket
weighed 35 pounds. Rahmati hoped the four
missiles could at least take
out
four of the vehicles driving from
Raqqa. If they got lucky, each blast could disable more than one
SUV.

The quad rider completed
the task quickly. Rahmati was glad that Daesh coming from Tal Azan
were moving so slowly.
Greedy pigs get
slaughtered
, he thought. The dust-cloud
from Raqqa was much closer. They looked to be about seven miles
out. That was just outside of the
five-mile
range of the Kornet
rockets.

The quad rider on recon radioed. “I
see them. The first HiLux will pass me in the next 30
seconds.”

A few minutes later, the Immortals
closest to Tal Azan, radioed that they had eyes on the convoy. “Get
ready Immortals,” whispered Rahmati into his radio. “Make sure you
wait until the entire convoy is within our arcs of
fire.”

The Immortal operating the
hand-held TV camera happened to look up at the sky. Thick clouds
had moved in. One cloud formation caught the
cameraman
’s eye. He pointed
the camera skyward. A cloud
impeccably
draped the moon, making it
appear as a sliver of a crescent moon.

The first mine exploded. Then
another.

The Immortals opened fire
on the Tal Azan convoy with their assault rifles and 50-cals.
Snipers took out both KamAZ Mustang drivers. Rahmati thought he
heard the blast of the first Kornet anti-tank missile fired at the
Raqqa convoy. The dust cloud from that direction now looked to be
three miles out. Many Daesh released the SUV handrails, dropping to
the
ground
to form defensive lines. The fighting was fierce. But Rahmati
felt he was getting the better of Caliphate column, so long as the
Raqqa reinforcements didn’t arrive.

At that moment—from out of
nowhere—a
fierce
wind blew from the northeast. A blinding,
blood-red
sandstorm
rose up from the
dirt
road.
Sandstorms
, known as
shammals,
were
more
frequent
in the
summer. But they
weren’t
unheard of in the
winter
.

This shammal was
unusual because it seemed only to kick up dirt from the road,
completely enveloping it.
It appeared to
be living, and breathing, and feeding on the Caliphate. The Daesh
convoy swerved to exit the tempest. But the red
sandstorm
grew
and followed them. Rahmati and
Hadi looked at one another in disbelief. The same
storm
blanketed
the other Raqqa procession, now about a mile away.

Rahmati ordered the
Immortals to switch to thermal vision. They continued the barrage
of .50-cals, raining bullets down upon both convoys. With the
sandstorm swallowing and blinding Daesh, the
thermal
vision enabled the
Immortals to shoot the Caliphate, like hyenas in a cage.

Rahmati could see the
confused Caliphate shooting at one another. The imagery
from
Rahmati’s
thermal vision goggles
was
recorded.
The
cameraman
behind Rahmati pointed
his camera back to the moon. Now the clouds made the moon
look
like a much
fatter
sliver
, a little over one-fourth of a full moon.

The
cameraman
yelled at Rahmati
and pointed to the sky. “Commander, the crescent moon is
waxing.”

*

This was
a total victory for Commander Muhammad Rahmati
and his Immortals. All of it
was
depicted
from numerous angles, in
different formats. The drone feed was nearly supernatural.
Commentators would later say the
sandstorm
looked like a red dragon,
consuming its prey.

All the Caliphate spec ops
that assaulted Tal Azan were dead. The Immortals drove the Mustangs
back to the FOB. Seven Toyota HiLuxes from the Raqqa convoy
lay in ashes.
Rahmati assumed any remaining Caliphate
retreated.

Upon arriving at Tal Azan,
Rahmati found one living Syrian soldier. He said that Daesh sent in
two waves of quadcopter drones. The first wave fried all the FOBs
electrical systems. The second wave
was composed
of suicide drones,
equipped with extremely powerful explosives. The
blasts
ate
through the Russian armor.

“
Now, the Russians are
going to be
really
pissed. Those T-14 Armatas are supposed to
be equipped
with
smart
,
explosive-resistant
armor. And there
won’t be a drop of vodka left in
Syria,
when they find out that their
next-generation tanks
were
fried
by a back-pack sized, drone
operated, EMP devices.
So much for
their robot tanks.
Siberia can expect to
r
eceive
some new residents
shortly.
I’m sure the former Armata engineers will love their new
gulag
.” EMP devices emitted a burst of
electromagnetic radiation that destroyed electronics.

Against the greatest odds,
Muhammad
Rahmati
and his Immortals, were victorious over a force
of superior numbers. The Immersive Media Team worked feverishly to
produce a polished video. They spliced together film from the
captured Daesh video equipment, vividly capturing their deaths
with
up-close
footage. They kicked off the video by harkening back to
Muhammad’s triumphant victory against superior odds at the Battle
of Badr.

Rahmati posted the video two days
later.

8:00 a.m. (EST), Tuesday, November 3,
2020 – Greenwich, CT

Adler Capital’s Offices,
112 Greenwich Plaza

As Tuesday morning dawned
in the US, Josh and Becca arrived at Adler Capital.
This was
the
first time the couple had been able
to speak securely
with
Jared,
since
they returned from Memphis. All of them met in the server room. In
the midst of the whirling fans and flashing lights of the racks of
computers, they filled each
other
in
.