Amayehli: A Story of America

By Michael Connelly

Amayehli is a story of America set in the not so distant future. It is a story of the American people who sudddenly find themselves having to fight for the fundamental freedoms that they have always cherished and often taken for granted. It is a story of treachery, espionage, treason, tragic loss, and tremendous valor by the diverse people who are proud to call themselves Americans. Ultimately, it is a story of people who risk everything for liberty.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Sep 23, 2009
• ISBN: 9781426983627

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© Copyright 2009 Michael Connelly.

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Printed in Victoria, BC, Canada.

ISBN: 978-1-4269-1752-3

ISBN: 978-1-4269-8362-7 (ebk)

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Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XVIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXVIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER XXXVI

CHAPTER XXXVII

CHAPTER XXXVIII

CHAPTER XXXVIX

CHAPTER XL

CHAPTER XLI

CHAPTER XLII

CHAPTER XLIII

ALSO BY MICHAEL CONNELLY

Riders in the Sky: The Ghosts and Legends of Philmont Scout Ranch, Merrill Press, Bellevue, WA 2001

The Mortarmen, Trafford Publishing, Canada, 2005

For My Fellow Veterans and All Those Who Have Gone Before Us To Protect Our Country’s Freedom

PROLOGUE

December 2019

The dawn seemed painfully slow in coming this winter morning, as if it too was reluctant to witness the carnage which was about to take place. The rising sun finally brought light, but little warmth, to the weary Chinese soldiers and their Iranian and Syrian allies manning their ragged defense lines. The snow was falling heavily, adding to the thick white blanket that already covered the mountains and bent the branches of majestic old trees toward the ground. The soldiers shivered in the frosty morning air, as did their adversaries poised in the mountains above them, but the Chinese and Middle Eastern troops shivered even more from pure fear; the fear that the great breakout was about to occur with their massive army beaten and sent reeling to the sea. Their positions had been pounded relentlessly for hours by artillery that they had not even known that their enemy possessed in large numbers. Now they wondered what else they didn’t know about and were not prepared for.

The Chinese led occupying forces had faced these people in the mountains all too often over the Past six years and they knew of their determination and ferocity. The clashes had first occurred when there were only small roving bands of ill-equipped and poorly armed guerillas to contend with. Then gradually these same guerillas had formed themselves into companies and battalions and finally into an army of deadly rebels. Nothing appeared to faze them; not death, not torture, not deprivation. They fought for something that had rarely been truly seen on this planet called Earth, and something that their adversaries had been trained to hate and yet failed to comprehend; they fought for freedom.

These rebels had fought skirmish after skirmish with the Chinese and their allies, small fights initially, and then larger engagements that soon turned into full-scale battles. Now, for the first time, it was the soldiers of the occupying army, the current masters of the universe who were on the defensive and faced with possible defeat. With a breakout from its refuge in the Great Smoky Mountains, the largest of all of the rebel armies could link up with other guerilla forces operating all over the United States and Canada. If they succeeded, then the grand design of the occupation forces that thought they could control the entire world would be shattered. Global conquest would be relegated to the status of a myth, unachievable when there were people who truly loved liberty and were willing to fight and die for it. Who were these people anyway? Their oppressors had been told that they were a decadent people who had abandoned their God and sought only material comfort. They were supposed to believe in nothing. Yet here they came once again, as they had against the British in 1776 and the Nazis and Japanese in the 1940s.

It was now five minutes after dawn, and the very mountains trembled as the booted feet of over three hundred thousand men and women began to move. Freedom had again become a possibility in America.

CHAPTER I

PRELUDE TO ARMAGEDDON

Washington D.C. in the summer can be incredibly hot. The sun’s rays bounce off the acres of pavement in the District of Columbia and mix with high humidity to give the overall impression that one is walking around in a sauna. It is a concrete city, beautiful and historic, but where people often suffer from a disease called Potomac fever that makes them think they are better than those whom they are supposed to be serving. It has taken on the atmosphere of the old European aristocracy which is exactly what the founding fathers had hoped to avoid and put to rest forever in this new country. This summer day was proving to be no exception to the rule as far as the weather was concerned, yet as hot as it was outside; the heat was even more intense inside the White House where Potomac fever had been at its worse in recent years.

At precisely 1:43 on the afternoon of June 13, 2013 Charles Malen, the President of the United States, sat at his desk in the Oval office glowering at three of his top cabinet members and advisors. The trio included Secretary of State Sam Billings, Secretary of Defense Anita Franklin; and Howard Morgenstein, the President’s National Security Advisor. They all knew this was not going to be a pleasant meeting. There were none of the usual amenities, no coffee served in imported China cups, and no finger sandwiches on antique silver trays for them to munch on. Instead, there was just their obviously agitated boss, who had loosened his tie and was wiping the sweat from his forehead with a silk handkerchief, despite the central air conditioning that hummed in the background.

Are you absolutely sure about these intelligence reports, Anita? asked the President, finally breaking the icy silence.

The Secretary of Defense, a slightly built, almost frail looking 53 year old brunette hesitated for a moment, shifting uncomfortably in her leather chair. She was fully aware that her answer would further infuriate her boss who had never been one to take bad news gracefully. In fact, his angry outbursts over even inconsequential matters had become legendary among his staff. Unfortunately, she was the one designated to give him the worst news of his political career due to the conspicuous absence of Carmen Juarez, the Director of the CIA who was in the hospital allegedly suffering from exhaustion. Juarez had been appointed head of the super spy agency despite the fact that she was a Political Science professor at Georgetown University and had no intelligence service or military background. She was there primarily to oversee the virtual dismantling of the agency under the guise of streamlining it to make it more efficient. Now everyone in the room suspected that it was pure cowardice, not any real illness that had her hospitalized. She didn’t want to be the fall guy for the failure of her agency, particularly since the failure had been orchestrated by her boss, the President, who had always hated the CIA and tried to undercut it in every way he could.

Damn it, Anita, answer me!

"Yes, Mr. President, I’m afraid so. As you know, our own intelligence in the area has been somewhat suspect due to Congressional cutbacks of funding for the CIA and severe restrictions on what our people can do in the areas of utilizing human intelligence and interrogation of captured terrorists and enemy agents. In fact, this information was obtained first by the Israelis and then confirmed by the British and the Germans. Even the Russians, who usually don’t like to share anything with us, have given us much of the same information. They are clearly also worried about what they have learned.

Then why the hell was I told, less than six months ago, that the Chinese outer space weapons systems couldn’t possibly be ready for deployment for at least a decade?

It was a combination of factors, Mr. President, responded Howard Morgenstein, the 64 year old gray haired veteran politician who had been the President’s friend for years. First, faulty intelligence as Anita mentioned, and secondly, the fact that we assumed that the Chinese timetable was basically the same as ours had been for project Star Wars before we scrapped it.

How could we have assumed that Howard? interjected the Secretary of State, who was one of three African American members of the Cabinet, Our project had less than a fourth of the budget theirs has and there was strong opposition to any outer space weapon protection system within our own party from the beginning.

All right! exploded the President who was obviously annoyed at the bickering among his own cabinet. Let’s cut through the crap and get to the point. I want you people spending the rest of the day with the other members of the National Security Council figuring out exactly what this means to our defenses. There will be a full meeting at eight o’clock tonight, and I want a complete report on where we stand and what we might be facing. Now do it!

As the three filed out to do the President’s bidding, the Chief Executive swiveled his chair around and faced the wall. His obvious anger of a moment before was quickly turning into fear. Damn, he muttered, this is just what I don’t need right now. He was well aware of his own contribution to the nation’s current danger.

He had been the leader, a few years earlier, of the successful fight on the Senate floor to drastically cut the funding for research and development of space technology weapons. He was already campaigning for President at the time and his major financial backers had demanded it since many of them had large financial ties to China and did not want the U. S. to appear belligerent to the Chinese. They claimed, as did most of the news media, that if we cut back on our program the Chinese would cut back on theirs, since it was only designed to defend them against America in the first place. Now the Chinese were ready to deploy such weapons while the United States was far behind, and had virtually no defense to anything the Chinese decided to do. The opposition could use that fact to crucify him and his party with the midterm elections just a little over a year from now.

It was typical of this President that his first concern was for his own political survival and little else. The tall, distinguished looking Marylander was the perfect political animal. He had risen to the top by accurately gauging changes in public opinion so he could shift his own political positions accordingly. He was not above any kind of political deal that suited his own ambitions. After the fall of the Soviet Union the public mood had been in favor of more butter and less guns. Malen had gone along with this despite the gnawing feeling that the Pentagon and CIA might be right about the real military capabilities and intentions of the Chinese and their allies among some third world countries.

Even after the disaster of 9/11 Malen had been one of the first to openly criticize President George Bush’s handling of the War on Terror. Then, following the 2008 election he had finally helped force the immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and then Afghanistan by siding with the majority of his colleagues in the Congress who voted to cut off funding for the war. This had indeed resulted in the conquest of Iraq by the Iranians, yet even after the Mullahs got their nuclear weapons Malen felt they would be controlled by their Chinese allies who had become a principal buyer of their oil and their most reliable supplier of weapons. This had appeared to be the case when worldwide terrorist attacks rapidly diminished following the 2012 U.S. election that swept him into office and gave his party an even more solid control of both houses of Congress.

However, even now the awesome possibility that the nation’s security might be in grave danger was still secondary in the mind of the President. He was Harvard educated and reared with the liberal view that the Chinese leaders and even the radical Jihadists who now controlled most of the Middle East were just politicians to be dealt with like any others. He refused to believe they would ever resort to all out war. Certainly, an attempt at political blackmail was possible, but that, thought the President, could probably be countered by threatening to reduce the flow of U.S. food and high technology to Beijing or even worse, stopping payments on the massive U.S. national debt that was owed to the Chinese who had bought most of the U.S. bonds. If the stick didn’t work then there was always the carrot. There was secret American business technology that the Chinese would love to have and Malen could arrange to have some of it leaked to them. Unfortunately, what the President was to learn at the National Security Council meeting would prove him disastrously wrong in all of his assumptions.

Four star General Herman Robinson (USAF) commanded the immediate attention of all those seated around the large conference table in the White House situation room. Carrying a muscular 245 pounds on his 6’5" frame, the General looked every bit the All-American hero. He was in fact one of the most decorated officers of both Operation Desert Storm and the second Iraq war so the rows of ribbons on his chest made him an even more imposing figure as he addressed his captive audience. Yet, what both impressed and frightened these politicians that night was what the General had to say along what was pictured on the big screen behind him.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, you are looking at a sketch of what is, at the moment, the ultimate weapon. This is what the British intelligence artists believe is an accurate likeness of a Chinese space station containing three separate weapons systems. It has both advanced laser and particle beam capabilities, as well as conventional nuclear warheads. We have concrete evidence that within the next two weeks the Chinese will launch five of these space stations into orbit. They will probably be fully operational within ten days of their launch. Once operational, they will have the capability of obliterating virtually the entire United States and Western Europe. They can knock out our ICBMs in their silos, destroy our military bases, and decimate our cities, all of this in a matter of hours. We have virtually no defense against these weapons at all.

Wait a moment General, interrupted the President, I know we have no specific defenses against space weapons of this type, but aren’t our submarine launched nuclear missiles as well as European based and sea launched cruise missiles with tactical nuclear warheads still enough of a deterrent by themselves against a Chinese attack? Can’t we retaliate in sufficient force to make such an attack very costly for the Chinese government?

No, Mr. President. You see we already know that the Chinese have deployed defensive particle beam weapons around their borders to protect against our missiles. While they are not as sophisticated as those being sent into space, these defensive weapons when combined with their standard missile defense capability will stop the vast majority of our missiles from penetrating their air space. The Chinese would suffer what they term acceptable losses from the few missiles that do hit their targets. They are no longer afraid of anything we can throw at them.

Are there any other questions Mr. President?

There was no response from Malen. He was visibly stunned and he sat ashen faced, looking more like a corpse in rigor mortis than the leader of what had once been the most powerful nation on earth. The others in the room seemed little better off. They all knew that the massive military cutbacks initiated by the Congress, this administration and its immediate predecessor in the executive branch were coming back to haunt them in a way no one could have imagined. They also knew that the reason there weren’t enough missiles to do devastating damage to the Chinese was due to the ill conceived nuclear weapons reduction treaty with the Russians. It had made great press but nobody thought to include the Chinese in the deal. As a result they continued to build nuclear weapons and had the windfall of the Russians selling them many of the weapons they had agreed to destroy.

It was the National Security Advisor who finally broke the silence that gripped the room.

What options do we have from a military standpoint General?

Basically only two, sir, either we strike with everything we have before they launch their space stations and hope we can destroy them on the ground and severely damage the other Chinese military capabilities, or we sit back and await the inevitable. Unfortunately, the first option is not much more acceptable than the second, since despite the fact that we could inflict fairly heavy losses on the Chinese, our own losses would be much heavier. That would be true even without the deployment of their space based weapons. They have a lot of ICBMs and as I said, better defenses than we have. We also still don’t know for sure where all these space stations are, although the British and Germans think they have pinpointed at least two of them. However, I still recommend the first course sir. It’s the only chance we have of surviving as a nation. If we wait for the Chinese to hit us first there will be no doubt as to the outcome. The war will be over almost as soon as it starts.

Then that leaves it up to diplomacy, Mr. President, interrupted the Secretary of State. I don’t favor and could never condone our starting another war, particularly a nuclear one. The world would never forgive us. Let’s find out what the Chinese want."

Suppose they want our unconditional surrender? asked Lieutenant General John Conway, the U.S. Marine Corps representative to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a constant irritant to the President and his cabinet.

Again, a stunned silence filled the room. No one had seemed to consider that possibility either. Finally, the President seemed to emerge from his stupor, but only to begin grasping at straws. I suggest we make no precipitous moves for the time being. After all, the Israeli, British, and other intelligence assessments could be wrong, or the Chinese could be bluffing. If not, I’m sure we can reach some kind of accommodation. I do have a good rapport with Chairman Shu.

No one really believed what the President was saying; not even Malen himself any longer, but it gave some of them a false sense of hope to cling to as the meeting broke up. For Charles Malen, all illusions were shattered about two hours later when he received an urgent call from a clearly shaken General Robinson.

Mr. President, we’ve just received a confirmed report from one of our satellite tracking stations. The Chinese have apparently moved up their timetable; they’ve launched the first of their space stations into orbit.

CHAPTER II

THE HAMMER FALLS

The launching of five massive space stations within a few days could not be completely hidden from the world, so the Chinese didn’t even try. Within twenty-four hours after the first launch the world press knew that something of major significance was occurring. By the time all five stations had reached their orbits three days later speculation was rampant. Of course, it was typical of the media that since they really didn’t know what was going on they reported every rumor as fact, which only added to the confusion. However, it was good for ratings so the newsrooms were, as usual, totally unconcerned about the effect their reporting might be having.

At first, the leaders of the few Western nations who really knew what was happening kept their silence for fear of a general panic. Instead, their governments demanded an explanation for the Chinese actions and Chinese ambassadors in a dozen different countries were summoned to appear before representatives of the host countries. They were questioned intensely about what the Chinese intended to do with these new weapons loaded platforms now orbiting the earth. The answers that were received were consistent and of course, totally false. The communist diplomats, using the skills that have established them as some of the world’s most adept liars, made assurances that the space stations were purely for scientific exploration and carried no weapons at all. The Chinese government was making no demands on any other nation and therefore there was nothing to negotiate.

Finally, after days of wasted effort on the private diplomatic front, the NATO allies went public and requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council. During the meeting, even at the risk of compromising some of their own intelligence sources, the western powers laid their evidence out for the entire world to see. They presented incontrovertible proof of what the space stations contained and what they were designed to do.

The Chinese ambassador to the UN then proceeded to calmly admit that there were some weapons on board the stations, but he provided assurance to the world that they were purely defensive in nature. The United States Ambassador, Samuel Smith, responded by offering a resolution in the Security Council condemning China and calling for worldwide economic sanctions on the regime. After hours of debate, the resolution failed when the Russians, who felt that they were even more vulnerable to attack than the rest of the world, vetoed it. By doing so they sent a clear signal to their old Chinese allies that Russia could be blackmailed.

The resolution was then brought before the U.N. General Assembly. The third world and so called non-aligned countries, which were already either allied with China or terrified of the Chinese, followed the Russian lead and combined to vote the resolution down in the hope that the Chinese would not make any of them immediate targets. The diplomatic efforts had again accomplished nothing in the United Nations.

With few options left, the Western powers continued to keep their military forces on maximum alert status where they had been since the launching of the first of the Chinese space platforms. However, this was not good enough and General Robinson knew it. He begged the Secretary of Defense and the President to allow him to disperse the U.S. Military’s weapons systems and personnel as much as possible to locations that the Chinese might not easily be able to find and attack. This would hopefully keep everything from being destroyed in a first strike, particularly if some of the nuclear weapons were hidden in underground locations. The Secretary of Defense refused the request, citing the immense cost, and the President concurred. Malen also told the General that such a move might further antagonize the Chinese who had already criticized the West for their aggressive moves such as increasing the alert status of the military and moving he U.S. 7th Fleet and some British ships into the Formosa Straits.

Robinson left the meeting infuriated. This was just more of the same politics that had made the country so vulnerable in the past few years to potential enemies. In early 2010 Congress had abruptly cut off funding to the American forces in Iraq even though much of the country outside of the Sunni triangle continued to be stable and great progress was being made even in that volatile area. Once the last American troops had left, the terrorists who had the full backing of Iran had intensified their efforts throughout the country and the serving President of the U.S. had refused to make good on his promise to back up the Iraqi government. It had held on valiantly for two years but without aid had finally fallen