Jihad Australia

By Tom Wild

We have dogmatic religion to explain what we cannot.
Throughout history gods and demons have given sane men insane purpose to destroy whatever they would not, or could not understand. The killing resurfaced here in the holy land, the ancient cradle of violence and love. No mere sticks and stones fight this, now all are equipped with advanced lethal weapons born of the new age. A doomed attack driven by dogmatic beliefs brought immediate and overwhelming air borne retribution. The death and destruction fuelled a hate and a search for holy revenge. After gaining experience from further disasters in Syria, Jordan and Afghanistan, revenge finally flared into a nuclear assault for religious control in another ancient land, Australia. A sworn jihad to any glorious death. A cautionary tale that could might or will soon happen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tom Wild
• Release date: Apr 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310258749

Tom Wild

After a varied career working on the land in Australia and New Zealand with stints in the Police force and Army in Australia, business ownership and University studies coupled with extensive overseas travel to meet very interesting people in a variety of beautiful countries all have combined and equipped me with the experiences and enough background information to believe that I have interesting stories to tell. I started out working with my hands deep in the soil then progressed to using my mind at a desk and finally realised my dreams, retired to play golf, archery and working in my garden, playing with our loved dachshund and finding cathartic release in at last writing. I found that work and study over long years has given me the understanding that I was able to write the stories that my mind had always wanted to tell but I had lacked the confidence and after defeating the excuses we use not to write.Dr Tom Wild

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Jihad Australia

Published by Tom Wild at Smashwords

Copyright 2015 Tom Wild

A Work of Fiction

All of the characters and events in this book are the figments of my imagination alone with the exception of a reference to the USSR and American nuclear arms reduction treaty.

Dedication and Thanks

My heartfelt thanks go to my wife for listening to long plot changes with multiple variations of characters and endless location visitations, and to my friends for their heartfelt technical support and encouragement.

Smashwords Edition, Licence Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

INTRODUCTION

All Faith is false, all Faith is true: Truth is the shattered mirror strown

in myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own.

Sir Richard Francis Burton (19 March 1821 – 20 October 1890)

as

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

We have dogmatic religion to explain what we cannot.

Throughout history gods and demons have given sane men insane purpose to destroy whatever they would not, or could not understand.

The killing resurfaced here in the holy land, the ancient cradle of violence and love. No mere sticks and stones fight this, now all are equipped with advanced lethal weapons born of the new age. A doomed attack driven by dogmatic beliefs brought immediate and overwhelming air borne retribution.

The death and destruction fuelled a hate and a search for holy revenge.

After gaining experience from further disasters in Syria, Jordan and Afghanistan, revenge finally flared into a nuclear assault for religious control in another ancient land, Australia.

A sworn jihad to any glorious death.

A cautionary tale that could might or will soon happen.

I write because someone must.

JIHAD AUSTRALIA

Table of Contents

BOOK ONE The Death and Birth

BOOK TWO Lethal Weapons Sold Here

BOOK THREE Disasters For All Sides

BOOK FOUR Deadly End Game

Epilogue

Apocalypse Averted by Luck Alone

Characters by Location

Abbreviations

About The Author

Start

BOOK ONE

Bukhari (52-65) The Prophet said, 'He who fights that Allah's Word, Islam,

should be superior, fights in Allah's Cause.

THE DEATH AND BIRTH OF A TERRORIST

Israel 1997 Oibya Village

So it begins again, so small a thing let me kill a few of them, and then...

Ominous black streaked clouds ran low over Oibya’s ruins eager to be gone.

A pack of half starved guard dogs squabbled in the dirt.

High above a black hawk drifted past quick red eyes ever watching.

A hungry child’s weak cry startled the scavenging dogs they briefly scattering as Abbas kicked out and he flinched as his injured knee twinged in pain. Abbas Hansawi was living out the last of his forty two years watched as his village dragged itself alive.

The sickly sweet smell of decay filled his lungs and hung over most of the village as it spread like a malevolent virus from the rubbish chocked open drains. He watched without seeing as fear paralysed his mind. I used to be strong and always believed Muhammad teachings. Follow and fight my holy battles and paradise awaits you. All the promises they make, how what can I believe. Fight the infidels and die in agony for what? Last year my youngest wife and her unborn child died. The Muhtar said any child born in their care would be forever unclean and stopped her going to the Kibbutz doctor. My heart ached as I watched her slowly bleed to death and the village women and I could do nothing.

Where was the merciful God’s grand design in that?

His head swung from side to side eyes wet in aching frustration, sleep had long been impossible. Why am I so afraid of dying? So close to my promised paradise a just reward or is it that I fear what is not there? He had never been one for learning his knife and strength had always been enough, more powerful and stronger than everyone in his village. He had always ruled any dispute or open fight and taken whatever he wanted. No more.

He shook his head again even that hurt; there was a dull ache behind his eyes sleep would help but his mind kept asking unanswerable questions. Where had his life gone? What if it was all for nothing in the end? Was a future in paradise awaited him, or was he only living out a bad dream unable to accept there never was anything waiting except unknowable death. Now he felt shrunken worn out and suddenly exposed to everyone as weak and vulnerable. Why had this happen to him? Suddenly cold he pulled his thawb close.

Exhausted and confused Abbas let his aching body drop back against the crumbling mud-brick wall of his tumbling down dwelling, dull eyes seeing but not watching the dogs fight over scraps in the drain. He had survived failed wars and bitter conflicts with rivals over power, food, women, religion, and the use of their exhausted land. Hard years of living with debilitating injuries in a hostile environment were taking their inevitable toll. The battered old warrior was only feared by his long suffering wives and the malnourished children of the village. The older villages called him, Mkahkah (old and broken down) that useless old cripple. They always whispered behind his back never to his face. Yet he knew, and felt their ridicule following him throughout the ramshackle village. You could hear them laughing and muttering low, He will be as dust soon. Azrael (the angel of death) must surely be waiting to take him.

Yet last night God be praised, just as the light faded the headman had taken him to a locked shed at the rear of his house, the best in the village. Here to his surprise he was shown an old mortar and five rockets hidden under a dirty blanket. The Muhtar stooped low, face scared from village disputes when he was young, lent hard his stick and glaring into Abbas’s dimmed brown eyes and commanded, "I have selected only you from all the other men. Take this for you are to go and do God’s sacred work.

Itbach el Yahud, (Kill the Jews)."

His heart lifted at this chance to show the village he was still a man of majeed. He would strut again and be seen as someone to be feared. Azrael could wait a little longer. Great honour would again be his; the Muhtar had trusted Abbas Hansawi alone above all the other fools. Now here was a reason to live a little longer. Face flushed with excitement and pride he felt alive again. They will all see me as I do this final great feat of killing many of the hated Israeli dogs.

Later Abbas boasted to his brothers that he would be lauded throughout the land as a great warrior for killing many of the Yahud. (Israelis) As God wills I will kill the unclean dogs in the morning. He had painfully struggled to his feet; his right knee shattered by shrapnel from a badly thrown grenade during the disastrous six day war. The grenade had unfortunately been thrown without care by a cowering fellow fighter.

His oft repeated hymn of hate sang for a last time in the night.They squat like poisoning frogs on our land. The ground our fathers died for; their sacred blood nourished and forever blessed that soil. Now it is their turn. The dog’s blood will run in a ceaseless flood. Standing up holding fast to his thick walking stick, he threw back his grizzled head and shouted at the star lit black velvet sky. I will show you all how to kill the Yahud.

In the morning Abbas prayed one last time for strength as he thought who knows there may be someone up there to hear. He was trembling in the predawn dark. His hands were shaking no not from fear, it was just the cold. Doubt of the Muhtar words still beset him. He had never been a friend always more an enemy in the past. Had the Muhtar selected him just for a sacrifice? Abbas aching mind still beset him with conflicting emotions and self doubt. Everything was made worse by the constant throbbing pain in his badly injured leg. Was he only a dying fool and now to be thrown away like useless rubbish?

Deep in his heart he knew there could be only one outcome today. He was dying; there was nothing else, no more time left for him anyway.

0430 hrs this was his day.

It was the cold dawn of his day. In the damp chill of the early morning he tried to push the rising panic generating by his fears away. A sudden stroke in the middle of the night some month or months ago he could not remember when, his memory of past times was failing. The stroke had robbed him of strength in his lower right arm and slurred his speech. He tried to hide the effects from everyone, but they all knew.

The steel central pipe had been poorly welded to the base plate and both were badly rusted and warped. Abbas struggled to hold the mortar and base steady; his age-crippled hands no longer had the strength to control the heavy weapon. His eldest son Hanif, the one with a deformed foot crushed in a rock fall finally came to help him. He drove three metal tent spikes through wide holes in the base plate down into the hard ground. The base plate now only partly stabilised sat uneasily rocking half resting on a wet rock; it shifted again as Abbas struggled to angle the weapon more toward his Israelite targets. He could see the hated Yahud even with his failing eyesight in their bright white shirts and long blue shorts all sheltered from the coming sun by wide brimmed brown hats. They were happily working among their orange trees, rows of bright green dotted with brighter orange almost ripe fruit in the growing morning sunlight. He could hear their chatter as the sound of their voices carried across the valley on the cool morning air; someone was even singing a well known farming tune welcoming the life giving light of the sun.

The orchard had been regimentally planted across the slope of the hill just outside the kibbutz’s high security fences. The higher tree rows were interspersed with slower growing fig trees and a small number of grape vines had been espaliered on the security fence.

They will strut like peacocks on my land no more. I will kill the dogs;

Look how they scurry around singing knowing, fearing nothing.

Let them know death. When I kill all will flee our land.

It will be as the great leader promised. Allahu Akbar.

He called to Fawzan his younger brother to bring one of the rockets. His growth had been stunted from a difficult birth that killed his mother. Now like most in the villagers he was partly blind from fly spread Trachoma, still he was father of three of his nephews. They were all pushing close eager to witness Abbas’s glorious victory. Stand up and hold it up over the top of the pipe. Let go when I say. Fawzan gingerly picked up the first rocket; the least damaged it was badly dinted and streaked with red rust; two of its three fins were bent.

Run back as soon as you drop it down the pipe, Abbas warned.

As the tube was almost two meters high, Fawzan cold hands shaking had to stretch up as high as he could to reach the waiting open mouth of the weapon. Abbas watched in breathless anticipation, aching knee forgotten, heart racing as the rocket was lifted gingerly up and held over the mouth of the metal tube.

Atlaqu (Fire).

Fawzan tipped the projectile into the pipe. His foot slipped on the edge of the damp rock. He fell and clutched at the side of the rusted tube. Abbas opened his mouth to shout angrily at his brother.

Their world was instantly destroyed in a sea of flame.

The rocket tube exploded outwards through the sides of the now ruptured pipe.

They were enveloped in a horrifying embrace of searing yellow flame.

Both men died as a hail of white hot metal fragments punched through their burning bodies and ignited the village houses.

No time left to curse Fawzan. No time to call out why to any god.

There would be no time for anything ever again.

As Abbas feared this was never going to be his day.

Kfur Ganasi Kibbutz

0430 hrs this was his day.

Paul Dwyer was excited, scared, happy and anxious all churning emotions mixed at the same time everything intensified by his mounting apprehension. His pulse was racing, stomach churning it felt tightly knotted with excitement. Feet stumbling, fine motor coordination lost. Mind racing as it was frantically playing over and over again vivid images of what if hero scenarios. This was really happening to him today, how could a day get any better? It would be his best day.

The local Israel air defence helicopter crew had agreed to take him with them on their routine early morning border patrol. The management of his adopted kibitz had agreed that this flight was to be his reward for two years of hard unpaid work. His fascination with aviation was well known by his friends, and they had suggested the helicopter flight to the kibbutz management committee.

Paul had arrived in Israel to honour his father’s dream of living in Israel his spiritual homeland. His father had planned to retired and then move from Australia, his adopted country. Hitler’s troops had been systematically killing all the Jewish people in his home village in Poland, just in time he had succeeded in escaping to England. After three years as a stateless person in a squalid refugee camp in England, he had been accepted by Australia as a genuine refuge and resettled in Melbourne. However early life’s poor diet, advancing age and hard work took its toll. He died before he was able to fulfil his dream. Paul felt honour bound to go to Israel in his father’s place.

His life at the Kfur Ganasi one of two hundred and seventy kibbutzim still operating throughout Israel was not hard for a fit Australian. As a qualified school teacher he spent two days a week teaching English as a second language to the children of the married or partnered kibbitzniks, and the rest of the working week out in the open working on a variety of farm tasks. Driving large and small farm machinery, planting seed and vegetable crops, pruning fruit trees and renewing shelter trees, building fences and sheds, and picking a large variety of fruit and harvesting vegetables, occupied all of his waking time. He worked an eight hour day, although this could grow to ten or twelve hours during the main harvest season. Never alone; he always ate and worked as part of a mixed gender team, everyone sleeping in a cramped dormitory. With the mixed sleeping arrangements he found sound sleep difficult at first. At home in rural Tasmania in his own room the only night sounds were the old timber house creaking in the wind or rain drumming on the corrugated iron roof. Now the night was filled with an unmelodious sounds of snoring and the whispered preludes that heralding soft movement between beds.

On this momentous day Paul had found it impossible to concentrate on the long and detailed mission and safety briefing. Too excited to sleep for long last night he had greeted the early call with relief, finally he was free from the night sounds of his companions. He had needed help to struggle into the tight flying suit, heavy armoured vest, communication helmet and finally a complicated safety harness. At a solid six foot three with blue eyes, close cut blond hair, he was taller and heavier than the usual kibbutz worker or helicopter gunner; however a tight hot pressure flying suit was a minor discomfort that could not quell the excitement building ever higher within him. His hands were wet with sweat, mouth dry; pulse racing, this was worth living for, life on the edge in a very different exciting world far from his usual prosaic farming life. Hands started to move automatically for a last nervous chew at well bitten fingernails only blocked by tight protective leather gloves.

The helicopter mission was designated as strictly observation only. A mission planned to fly only along Israel nominated borders, checking for signs of possible terrorist incursion routes or the disturbed ground indicative of newly planted IED’s (Improvised Explosive Devices). While current squadron standing orders did permit the engagement of opportune targets, they were theoretically confined to Israel territory, and then only when the target was authorised by senior control before any committed offensive action commenced. On the other hand, in the past authorisation had been given well after the event, and in some cases for offensive actions well beyond Israel’s borders. Authorisation depended on the engagement being considered worthwhile and successful or immediate retaliation to an enemy attack. Then the justification request needed to be properly worded, with sufficient evidence to back up any claims, and at least detailed after if not before action photographs. While it was not directly stated, returning without casualties and only a minimum level of equipment damage was also seen as a positive outcome in terms of granting post authorisation rather than a politically inspired demotion or reprimand.

Israel Syria Ceasefire Line Bravo

His day finally dawned with a damp cool wind blowing thin clouds across a sky that promised clear flying when the clouds were burnt off by the increasing temperature. Running through the helicopter safety procedures check-list seemed to take forever. Paul heart rate jumped even higher at the sudden bang of a starting cartridge. This igniting the twin GE turbo shaft’s familiar syncopated rhythm of multiple blades beating the air during initial wind up. Then the deafening screams of full revolutions, a mind deadening uproar, everything vibrating and shaking. The smell of aviation fuel and hot oil filled his nose and increased his excitement. After a short shuddering run the freedom of lift off, weight increasing, harness jerking. Almost before Paul had time to think they were high up and banking into a tight turn, already closing the disputed border territory.

The helicopter’s old alloy frame groaning under the stress of the sharp turn. While well maintained it was still an old superseded Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk. Israel had bought it cheaply from Australia with USA religious sympathiser’s money. The money had been wired from America to an accommodating London bank, and then without any publicity transferred to Australia’s overseas aid fund account.

Paul watched as the low brown hills flashing by just under his feet, interspersed with the vivid green of orange groves and the more subdued shades of eucalyptus trees. Two five ton trucks painted in mottled camouflage tones suddenly appeared each panting a plume of white blue smoke as they ground painfully up a steep dun coloured road. The road snaked around the blinding white of low fortified stone and concrete buildings that were protected and surrounded by four meter high linked steel chain security fences. Flying low over his own kibbutz buildings, he could see their surrounding perimeter security fences. Here close to the border they had additional watch towers equipped with motion detectors and wide angle cameras that were monitored twenty four seven from the depths of a hardened bunker.

The helicopter slowed and sank nose down as he saw in front of them the rusting colours of the concertina wire barricade and off-white concrete deep tank traps marking the disputed border. They dropped lower down toward the brown stones streaked with the white from concentrated salt of a long dry water course running obliquely across the border. Half way up the rocky creek bank a few stunted acacia bushes clung precariously to life totally dependent on the chill morning’s moisture for their precious chance of survival.

It looks like nothing could be alive down there. All rock and sun blasted sand. I bet it hasn’t rained in that creek since Jesus was a boy. Lower still the helicopter dropped, you could almost reach down and touch individual stones worn smooth where water had once flowed eons ago.

Paul head jerked up.

His mind was ripped away from happy sightseeing by an urgent stream of truncated Hebrew orders loudly erupting in his headphones. The orders were abbreviated and very fast, far too rapid for him to attempt to translate and begin to understand their meaning, even with his proud growing command of the ancient language. The helicopter’s engines surged and they suddenly banked hard left. Paul grabbed desperately at his shoulder straps, the sudden flight attitude change leaving him hanging precariously suspended by his harness straps. Both of his feet were dangling out of the open doorway scrabbling frantically seeking the security of the lost floor. The helicopter banked still further left and accelerated, then suddenly spun back levelled and still low down crossed over the wire entanglement marking the border.

Now marginally in Syria they slowed and levelled out nose down, moving into a deliberate forward side to side menacing drift. God we are so low, I was sure we were about to hit the ground. I wonder what the hell that was all about. If they wanted to scare me they sure succeeded. I just about wet myself thank god for this tight flying suit. As the helicopter slowed still more and steadied a relieved Paul scrambled back and regained the limited comfort and safety of his webbing seat, his feet thankfully