Tour de Force 2009: Part of the Montefloran Chronicle Series

By J S Galvin

In a small country in Europe, terrorists try to get an ISIS-type foothold. They capture an old castle and ruin a Saturday night date for the duchess CC. She is about to turn twenty-one and is in no mood for party crashers. With the help of some special friends, she gets even.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9781543435412

J S Galvin

JOHN S GALVIN IS AN OLDER FIRST TIME AUTHOR THAT HAS BEEN STUDYING HISTORY FOR OVER 50 YEARS. IN HIS NOVELS HE LOVES TO WEAVE A STORY WITHIN A HISTORICAL CONTENT, BLENDING THE PAST WITH GOOD STORIES AND BELIEVABLE CHARACTERS.

Book preview

7:40 pm on the evening of Saturday June 27th, 2009

Robert open the bedchamber door. Inside he found the girl laying across the bed, eating some fruit. She had nothing on but a smile, and what a smile it was! To his right Michael was coming out of the water closet, adjusting his robe. Michael looked up, surprised to see anyone at the door.

Get dressed, we have a problem! said Robert. That formal? said Michael.

That kind of a problem!

Michael thought about some witty response, but Robert was way too serious to joke with this evening. He quickly got dressed and left the still languishing girl on the bed.

Angelique, I will be back as soon as I can. said Michael. Uuh, huh! She was still eating!

As they were leaving the room, both the 25-year-old Michael, and the 30-year-old Robert looked back at the 23-year-old girl, and paused. Then Robert closed the door or they would never have gotten out of there.

Down the short corridor to the chalet office where the rest of the men were waiting for the meeting to commence, Robert opened the door, and the two of them entered a crowded room. Michael moved over to get into his traditional seat behind the desk. Robert took his traditional place, directly in from of the desk. The rest of the men were standing in the room.

Relax everybody! The men seated themselves around the room.

Robert started the briefing, About three hours ago, terrorists attacked and captured the Castle. Of the thirty men that were stationed there, we know that ten have been killed. We are assuming that all thirty are, or will be killed shortly. The attacking group has made no claim of responsibility for the acts, but we believe that will come soon. From observers, we now know that a set of four buses were used to bring in some hundred odd, men. Following it was a panel truck, and then a media van with a generator trailer. They left the buses outside the gate, they couldn’t get in, but the other two vehicles managed to make it inside.

They came prepared! How . . . said Michael.

The dead men were thrown over the parapets in pieces! Right! What . . .

Heads and then the rest.

Michael looked away from Robert for a moment, shook his head, coughed, shook a bit more, then rejoined the discussion with Robert. There was a lot of shuffling in the room, as some of the others, were just as disturbed by this news as Michael was.

What do you need from me?

Robert continued, We will need your signature on several documents, that will start our response to this event. The first, is the initiator of the 2002 terrorist response plan C, for Castle. Robert shoved a document across the desk, that was handed to him by one of the military men in the room. Michael thought it was O’Hara of the engineers, but it could have been one of the others. Michael looked for the title on it, found it, confirmed that it was the plan C. He then looked for the end of the document and the signature section, found it and signed it: Michael, Duke of Monteflora CCIX.

Robert continued, The next document is the authorization for martial law through out the City of Florianburg, and though out the country!

We do not know yet, how many targets they have in mind, do we? asked Michael.

No we don’t!

Then I will sign this, but I want it as temporary as possible. We have a lot of people coming and going this season. If we can scope this down quickly, do it! He signed the document!

Robert continued, This next one is to mobilize the active military and class A reserves, bringing up the regiment to full strength, and then deploying it! Michael signed that one without comment.

This next one authorizes the police to search and seize any one, or thing, they suspect may be a harm to this country! He pushed the document across the desk. Michael just looked at it. He then looked up at Robert.

Police state! Overnight? I don’t like this at all! We have thousands of tourists, visitors and refugees in this country right now. How do you expect to keep them quiet as you search them all?

I agree, this is Draconian, but it may be necessary! If we do not have this power granted by you to us, then we will not be able to justify our actions later. If we do have this power, we can use it sparingly and be fully justified in the end.

The old ends justify the means argument! said Michael.

Yes! And he just stood there! For a long moment Michael hovered over the document, undecided, but then signed it.

Sparingly . . . sparingly, but effectively! Try not to start a race war or an international incident with this!

Robert continued, This next document authorizes us to cut the power to the Castle. With out it the Electric Company will not do it!

Don’t I own a good chunk of the Electric Company? asked Michael.

Yes, you do, but they still want your direct assent to cutting power to one of your buildings!

Ok! They have a point! He signed the document!

It was now near 8 pm, and an aide to the Duke opened the office door.

They are broadcasting on one of the Spanish channels. The aide went over and turned on the television set and got the right channel. Up came a scene from other Al Queda productions, a blank room with the terrorist flag as a backdrop, a masked man kneeling with a rifle, and a prisoner reading the proclamation in the local language, in this case English. The room sat still, as the aide got the sound up and running.

. . . . we are calling for Jihad, against the western world! Rise up Muslims in Monteflora! Take your righteous place as the rulers of this country! Allah Akbar!

They started by announcing that they are the Redeemers of the Almoravids! said the aide.

That is the Al Queda flag on that wall. said O’Hara. Now we know who they are! said General Ortiz. Al Queda is typically well prepared! said O’Hara. That makes this all easier! said Ortiz.

How so? asked Michael.

Typically Al Queda will strike at major structures only! We have so few, that I can say we can cover them, and seal off the Castle with the Active Regiment. said Ortiz.

This is going to take some time! General Ortiz can you keep the regiment in the field for a month or so? asked Robert.

As long as you want it! Politically, it may be a problem the longer this goes on! said Ortiz.

That’s a given. said Robert.

Alright! Sweep the country for loose Al Queda, secure everything and seal off the terrorists! Anything else Robert? asked Michael.

The inevitable media tsunami, your Highness! You enjoyed that didn’t you? said Michael.

As always, your servant! said Robert.

It’s 8 pm ish, can you have a press release available for the 11 pm news? Yes! We had started one, but now it will have to be revised.

They are broadcasting, should we let them? asked O’Hara. Everybody?" asked Robert.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs Gough. Yes, let them spout forth for a while. We may learn more from them than we could in any other way!

Brig Gen Ortiz said, I agree! We are in the dark here now! I could use some information on them, and since they typically can’t keep their mouths shut, then I can learn from them too!

Robert asked, All agree?

The room grunted it’s approval.

Then we let them broadcast until it is no longer tactically useful! said General Ortiz.

Do a document on that one too, Robert! It is a sound idea. Now as for us, how and where do we meet to monitor this situation? This room is not set up for that! And the Castle rooms are no longer available! said Michael.

I will arrange for the WAR Room to be in one of the Government buildings by the morning. Aides will contact you all by 8 am tomorrow morning with the exact location, but I am thinking the Governor’s room. It is big enough for a large meeting, and it will have a wall that we can use for the maps! said Robert.

So be it! And Michael gavelled the meeting adjourned. As the men filed out of the room, Michael hung back. He had never been in a situation like this before. Robert saw this, and as he moved the other guests out of the room, realized what a new weight was on his young charge. Just as he was about to close the door, a young woman dashed into the room.

What just happened? shouted CC.

Al Queda has taken the Castle! said Michael. Who the hell is Al Queda?

A bunch of Osama bin Laden types! What are they doing here?

Taking over the Castle! Michael was used to this kind if circular conversation with his 21-year-old sister.

You said that already! I know!

So tell me something I don’t know!

About 5 pm these terrorists attacked and captured the Castle! They have killed ten of the thirty men inside already, and are broadcasting as we speak, their brand of venom and Islamic Jihadist trash. They . . .

Than shut it down, and clean them out! I have a date tonight! You know how difficult it is to get a date for me! I am a Duchess! I just don’t go online and set one up! I . . .

I don’t think you are going on a date this night, or any other night for a couple of weeks! said Michael.

Martial law has been declared. The curfew will be tonight at 11:30 pm, and then at sundown for the affected areas at until we decide otherwise! said Robert.

Who’s WE? Michael said, Me!

Then I expect you to do this as quickly as you can, because after I finish tweeting on this, you won’t see another girl for a year, or more!

And this was my fault?

I gotta blame somebody!W . . .

Then blame the terrorists! They are ruining you life, not me! CC stormed out of the room.

Robert said, I forgot about Twitter!

CC could be useful in this situation! We get out there ahead of the terrorists. We poison the pool for them, before they do it to us! Get the cadets on it! Get the cadet’s girlfriends on it! Leave Angelique out of it! said Michael.

Right! said Robert. And he left feeling better about his young Duke now!

June 27th, 2009 10 pm Saturday, day one

Michael slowly walked back to his bedroom. He entered the room, just as Angelique was coming out of the water closet. She was stunning, and so, so willing! He undressed and joined her in bed. He allowed her to take control, not an often occurrence, but nice. His mind was racing about the countryside, trying to grasp what was happening just down the road, and outside of the valley too. She got him involved with her desires and finished him off. They slept together, she soundly, he fitfully.

While Michael was dealing with the situation in his own way, CC was mad as hell and fit to be tied! She went to her room in the chalet, got out of her party clothes, got into her sleeping at home clothes, and got on to her I-pod phone! She text-ed everyone of her friends, telling them about the terrorist attack, the coming curfews, the martial law implementation, and that her brother was responsible for everything that was going wrong with her life! She left it at that, and went to the water closet. When she came back she expected to have loads of texts to respond to, but there were only a few! Her closest girlfriends, were bitching about a wasted Saturday night in the summer, there were only a dozen or so a year! And the tourist boys were the best! They paid for everything and you could get away from them so easily! So what if a few flaky Arabs wanted to take over the Castle, nothing happened there anyway!

Sometime near midnight, when the lame bitching, slowed down to just plain stupid gossip, CC realized how important she was to the Duchy. She was a Duchess, and as a result was a target for this kind of terrorist attack all by herself! A couple of the emails she had received, but did not respond to, were a little weird and she would ask Robert about them in the morning. But for now she felt abused, tired and a little sorry for herself! She signed off of the net, and went to sleep, fairly convinced that she had better keep herself inside the security net for a while. She nodded off to a series of horrible dream’s where there was no knight in shining armor, just some dirty Arabs on spitting camels.

CC need not have bothered with asking Robert to track those odd emails, he already was! When CC had gotten her computer, then her phone, then her I-pod, Robert had his people tap into them and set up duplicates of her traffic on his computers. His people knew what she was saying, doing, talking to and meeting with as fast as she could change her mind or her schedule. It was considered the worst job in the unit! Nothing a teenager could say, or do, was in anyway relevant to life on the third rock from the sun! Except tonight!

The poor kid who got to monitor her tonight, was the rookie in the unit. He got all the scut work, until a newer kid came on board. They were only two hour shifts, due to the high boredom levels, but they always got an earful! And then the odd emails showed up! The red flags went off, and the unit went on full alert! Robert was appraised of the situation and the super-techies were woken up and put into a round room, fed proteins and left to decipher the emails: origins, players, anything! The poor kid got a promotion, out of this leper colony job and sent home to rest up, for further responsibilities in the morning.

The emails had indeed been from unfriendlies, and Robert’s people did a good job by morning, in finding them and isolating them within the chalet computers! The source was eventually found to be inside Monteflora! Inside the Castle of Monteflora! It was the terrorists themselves! This was one of the ways, that they had of gathering intelligence among western society. Hacking into the cell phones of teenage girls! No wonder it took them so long to get a viable plan together! If the poor kid who just left that job had any advice for them, it would be don’t believe a word of anything you hear or read! Trying to make sense out of these conversations, would crack a Cray computer array! NASA in the USA solved smaller problems, calculating space ship orbits!

5 pm Saturday, June 27th, 2009

Wesley Albert Jones, aged 25, American, Black was strutting through the gatehouse of the Castle of Monteflora, wearing a Cat-in-the Hat clown hat, and a multicolored Jamaican robe. It was so over the top, that the four guards at the gate, just shook their heads and let him continue on in. Wesley walked into the castle courtyard like he owned the place!

Behind this ridiculous character, was a drifting knot of Arabic tourists, that had disembarked from four tour buses, and was in a disorganized way, making it’s journey to the Castle, supposedly following it’s tour guide. In the last two years, this scene had played out many times, with orientals mostly, but there were Islamic groups too. The danger vibe was too low to respond to.

The group seemed to have no coherency to it. Some members were coming through the gate some were not. Some were still down at the buses, milling about. The typical European bias against the Islamic people kicked in, as the guards discounted any threat from this group, just from the look of them. Wesley Albert Jones, Al Queda terrorist had counted exactly on that, to accomplish his goal. As an Afro-American he knew how this worked. He was invisible to his fellow Americans in Detroit, even though most of them were just as black as he was.

Once a portion of the group got inside the Castle, Wesley turned towards them, stopped his forward movement and blew on his whistle. Then all hell broke loose! This disorganized Arabic tourist mob, started to run all over the place. Wesley just stood there. The four guards at the gate, were quickly knifed to death. They had no chance at all. The remaining guards, in various parts of the Castle, were sought out and killed. It took a whole hour to accomplish this mission. During that time, Wesley walked back down the driveway, and tossed his hat onto the manicured lawn surrounding the Castle. He then continued to the bus park area, to collect his gear and direct his troops.

At the buses the remaining men grabbed out of the storage bays, bags of gear, typically three bags per man, as the other two men of their pod, were inside capturing the castle. Then at a fast walk, they went up the driveway and into the Castle. They now did indeed own the place. Finally, Wesley Albert Jones, known to his Al Queda masters as Al Abama, had done what he had said all along he would do.

Standing in the parking lot, Al Abama waited for the next vehicle to arrive. The buses were unloaded and four men drove them back to Barcelona, from which they had been stolen. The next vehicle was a panel truck, of twenty feet, that had the heavy supplies in it, food for a while, weapons, ammunition, communications equipment. All of this, had also been painstakingly stolen, from the Spanish military over the last eighteen months. Since Spain was allied with the NATO, the communications equipment and the ammunition were on the same wave lengths and caliber of the Montefloran military. Wesley had counted on that too. He would need all the captured support he could get. Al Queda was notoriously stingy with funds!

The truck was late. Islamic people did not seem to have watches! In the last few years, since Wesley had joined the terrorists, he had rarely seen a watch. Even more rarely did he attended a meeting, where everyone arrived at a stipulated time. Sometimes the meetings were held for several days, just so someone could join in. As an American, his idle speed was so much faster than these people. He had gotten so frustrated with them, he was to the point of turning against them himself! The frustration was mutual, Al Queda wished he had never come to them. Now they had him, just where he wanted to be, and they were happy he was somewhere in Europe, and not in one of their camps!

Islam had been around since 645-ish AD. The political high point came in the 1400’s and Islam had stalled, if not been put in retreat, since then. The Islamic military had not had a victory, since the middle ages against the Western Christian forces. Muslims had repeatedly decided to believe in Allah, and the prophet, Mohamed, Peace be Upon Him, and very little else. As such they idled through the ages at a few miles per hour, while the Orientals advanced at a quickening pace, and the Christian west fairly raced on by them. With the coming of the age of the Internet, the handwriting was on the wall!

In a world of intellectual growth, the stifling tenets of the Qur’an, and it’s supporting Sunni or Shi’ite texts, were no longer capable of educating the masses in the ways of the modern world. They even forced strange mutations of western institutions, in order to build the infrastructure of a modern society. This only happened in the few moderately paced countries that had Islam as it’s main religion.

In fact western education was considered a weapon, to be used against the infidels themselves! Islamist college graduates, had piled up an impressive record of engineering degrees, in all of the fields of study where you could conceivably damage something or someone! This was not education to grow a society, which is what they repeatedly told their instructors, but education to destroy a society.

Wesley liked the lack of education in his fellow terrorists. Their degrees were useless, outdated, and missing in most of the humanities that made up a well rounded intellectual, just like him! As a black kid from the streets of Detroit, he was barely able to graduate from an inner city high school, and get out of there without a lingering criminal record. His high school diploma, was a family heirloom in his mother’s house, back in the States. It was given pride of place, between the two death certificates of his older brothers! Wesley’s knowledge of the world was akin to a block of Swiss Cheese, full of holes. That normally would have given him an edge, if he had only filled them with something other than hate.

Wesley had spent the last two years, trying to figure out how and where to strike his blow against the West. He did not care much for Europe, he had never been there, except to move from Canada, through Heathrow, to Amsterdam, to Istanbul, and ultimately to a camp south of Qom, in Iran. He was still a historical, geographical, economic, political and philosophical tourist! He wanted to get back at Detroit! To hell with the rest of the world! But at the ripe old age of 25, nobody would believe him, or follow him or finance him. So he played the game with Al Queda. And they were not stupid enough to fall for it.

This adventure he was in the middle of, should have happened on September 11th, 2008, but he could not get enough of anything in place to set the venture in motion. This was deliberate on the part of Al Queda. They distrusted American terrorists. They had a bias against western turncoats, apparently just by looking at them!

As a result, it took longer to get this show on the road. Wesley had initially wanted to attack anywhere else but Monteflora, as it did not seem to be important enough. He wanted the Castle in Luxembourg! But as it was a NATO headquarters, his bosses decided it was too well guarded to take quickly and cheaply! Emphasis on Cheaply.

And so the tragedy to be played out in Monteflora, was due to the phenomenon of the Low Bidder Syndrome, where the least effort was to be expended for the most return, and if it failed, then so what! There would always be another day, another target, another martyr. All Islam really had left was time! At least they thought so.

That left Wesley waiting for his supply truck, and also his other weapon, the media van that he had stolen himself from one of the stations assembling in Barcelona. He did not even know why they were there! The Tour De France bicycle race, the most famous bicycle race in the world, was going to be in Barcelona for two days this year and Lance Armstrong was trying to make a come back after four years out of the saddle! This was international news and very vulnerable to interference from terrorists. Wesley had no idea it was happening. It only occurred to him, that this was the tourist season and lots of Islamic people could move around, fairly invisibly, during this time of year. That was why he picked the date that he did. It also limited the stay in Barcelona for the nearly 150 men who had had limited contact with western culture, and might just get lost in if for a while!

The truck finally arrived at 7:20 pm with the driver cussing out in Arabic, the Tom Tom GPS unit, on the stolen truck’s dashboard. Wesley got in, and they drove up the driveway to the castle gatehouse, gingerly squeezing the box truck inside the arched opening. This castle was not built for modern day vehicles! Right behind the truck came the van, also late, but now in the right place at apparently, the right time. This one was even more of a squeeze to get in the gate. It had all it’s appendages on it’s roof and they made it under the arch without damage. That was critical, as spare parts for stolen media equipment were going to be in short supply.

For the next two hours the 150 odd terrorists, worked to secure their ill gotten gains and set up a defensive stance within the castle. The media van could not make it into the inner fort, so it was set up within the outer courtyard. The extension of the antennae was done and the generator trailer set up and started. By 7:45 pm they were broadcasting their prerecorded messages to the world, on a pirated Spanish frequency!

Wesley then went to secure his own suite for the duration. He went inside the inner fort, up the stairs as Otis had never visited this place, and finally found the Ducal family rooms. He loved the one with the window in it. It looked west, not east as these Muslims seemed to always be doing. He thanked his Christian God that the plumbing had been updated, and used it profusely! The tension had given him cramps.

With the generator trailer fueled and hooked up to the castle electrical system, the danger of the Monteflorans cutting power to the facility was eliminated. The fuel had come in the panel truck, two 55 gallon drums of it. They figured to be a while, before any kind of supplies could or would get through to them. Up on the tallest of the turrets they placed a green light marker, so that any helicopters bringing supplies at night would know where they were. Al Abama had watched his American cop TV shows as a kid and remembered!

The mood of the men was now incredibly high. The level of trust between them and him had never been much, but now that they actually had pulled off the attack, it had gotten much better. He was now, not that American Pretender, but Al Abama, the Warrior! He was as struck by the new friendliness of the men, as he was their demeanor, now that they had secured the place.

Al Abama went out to see if the media truck had contacted the Al Queda central office, to let them know what had happened. They were still trying to raise them on the phone net. Meanwhile a small group of technicians were on the internet trying to get information from various Twitter and Facebook users. Then the lights in the castle went out!,

Wesley shouted Wait for it!

As the men in the van looked out the windows, the generator kicked in and the lights came back on!

Wesley said, Tell #2 to kill all unnecessary lights and electricity usage, now please!

The man he said that to, scurried out to the courtyard to find the second in command of the group. In a few minutes, lights all over the place, started to go out as they were unscrewed. If they couldn’t, then they were left for daylight to work on.

Al Abama left the van, and went over to the gatehouse and took the stairs up to the top. He looked out at the lawn area and saw the lights still on. They must be on a separate circuit than the Castle itself. That could be a problem later, as those lights were probably not under the control of this building. He would seek out that answer in the morning also. But it was a pretty sight! All lit up and green. Traffic was no longer flowing and there were no people out on the sidewalks. These Monteflorans had acted swiftly to seal the area off. That’s what he came up here to confirm, and confirm it he did. What he missed was the lack of a hat on the lawn. He just did not notice that it wasn’t there.

Wesley stood there trying to see in the dark, beyond the first row of townhouses that filled the opposite side of the ring road, like so many teeth. He was trying to feel the mind that he knew would be against him. He got nothing! The night was clear and clear of enemy intents. The warm air made it a wonderful change, from the hot, dry nights in the Moroccan deserts, that had recently been his home. He almost felt like this was a night in the park in downtown Detroit, warm, a little humid, scented with flowers, trees and home cooking! Maybe he could get a taste of revenge against Detroit, here in a small country, in a foreign land. There certainly were no Castles of this type in Detroit, only the municipal jail even came close! As he left the top of the gatehouse, he noticed a little red dot of light on the wall he had just passed. The shiver he developed had nothing to do with the weather. They were watching!

Al Queda had mixed feelings about the whole affair. They naturally did not trust westerners, and turncoats in particular. The success of westerner led efforts, was not any greater than their own Arab led efforts. In fact, the western turncoats had histories within the local and national police force databases, that most of the Arabic nationals did not have. It was easier to infiltrate people into the west, from the east, if they had nobody looking for them. It was easier to infiltrate people into Europe, because of the large native population of Islamic peoples, and the proximity of the Wahhabi schools and mosques. Why bother with America, when terror could be done to the west next door, in Europe.

When Wesley Albert Jones, disaffected, black urban American, came to them, they set about parking him in places, that would not attract attention to him, while they did a cursory background check on him. This was a double edged sword though. He had no criminal record and nobody was interested in him, for any reason that they could find. But a straight up plant would have the same clean record! To chance that this was an informer, or worse a traitor, planted inside their organization, was too much to allow. So he languished in Qom, for almost a year doing the normal training that they would give low level operatives, and watched him.

Fortunately for Wesley, he was mostly unaware of this scrutiny. He proceeded to complain, and be as ugly an American, as any of these people had ever seen. He was always completing tasks early, and wandering off somewhere, to find something else to do. Arabs do not do that. The average low level operator had not enough motivation, and brains, to think for himself. This was what the organization wanted, robotic operatives that did not think, know or care what happened to themselves. Wesley was anything but that. He was animated, aggressive, independent minded and compared to the Arabs, anything but lazy!

The other thing, was that in spite of his lack of a college degree from anywhere, he repeatedly out performed, any Arab, that he was in competition with, on any but the truly technical subjects. Get him in a nuclear situation, he knew enough to not get involved, but your average gun, bomb or knife fight always ended up in Wesley’s favor. He did not make any friends there at Qom. But he did shake the surveillance that had been on him, by boring it to death.

After the year was over, he was allowed to travel to Morocco, and to try to set up some kind of attack. The leadership wanted him to do a small thing, and fail at it. They were still convinced of his inability to understand the finer purposes of Islam, as it tried to conquer the world. It was of no matter, that militarily the forces of Islam, had not won a battle in 500 years, the struggle was the glory, the sacrifice was the soil, the list of names of martyred men, was the purpose of the fighting. They were playing not for today, but for tomorrow: for the hearts and minds of the unborn youth, not the existing unmovable mass of Islamic nobodies, that just were trying to survive on a daily basis.

In Morocco Wesley was given a team of men, that were both there for him to use, and