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  Reprisal!

  The Eagle Rises!

  THE CLIFF ROBERTS VERSION

  CLIFF ROBERTS

  Published 2010 –Cliff Popkey aka Chris Keys

  Reprisal! The Eagle Rises!

  Copyright © 2010 by Cliff Popkey

  All rights purchased and reedited 2013 by Cliff Roberts

  All rights reserved –Cliff Roberts- Author

  This book or parts there of, may not be used or reproduced in any form without permission. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission, in writing, from the publisher.

  ISBN # 1490467149

  EAN-13# 978-1490467146

  Library of Congress Cataloging Data- contact LoCC

  This is a work of fiction, Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Praise for “REPRISAL! The Eagle Rises!”

  Vigilantes or Patriots?

  I’ve often thought, out of frustration with a liberal administration, what kind of response unlimited wealth could achieve to do the job of protecting America when the Ideological Administration refused to do so. Now we know. ‘Reprisal’ has answered that question – in spades. I give it 5 stars!!!!! ~Frank Fiore—author of CyberKill!

  Reprisal! The Eagle Rises! is a hold-on-to-your-seat action thriller from beginning to end. Politics, terrorism and personal ambition creates a toxic mixture that will have the reader lost deep within the action, wondering how things can get worse for the good guys. If you’re looking for a page-turner you can’t put down, Cliff Roberts has one right here. ~Tony Eldridge—author of The Samson Effect and Creator of Marketing tips for Authors--the hottest market site for authors on the web. Soon to be a major motion picture!

  DEDICATION:

  To my wife and number one fan—Donna

  To Richard, my late brother—The word is out.

  Acknowledgements

  I could have never done this with out the love and patience of darling my wife. Donna is truly an angel on earth and my inspiration! All that I am and all that I do is for her.

  Thanks to Nick Wale—Novel Ideas, the best PR for the money!

  THE BREATH OF INSPIRATION

  All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent!

  Thomas Jefferson

  Destiny is not a matter of chance it is a matter of choice. It is not something to be waited for, but rather something to be achieved.

  William Jennings Bryan

  If we wait for the moment when everything is ready, we shall never begin!”

  Ivan Turgenev

  PROLOGUE – Spring 1947

  Under a radiant morning sun, a 1939 Silver Eagle Mercedes was in route to Eretria, the Capital of Massawa and Eretria, a kingdom on the west coast of the Red Sea. It’s highly polished black finish and silvery chrome trim glistened in the bright morning sun as it bounded over the open desert. The car had once belonged to an arrogant colonel of the Third Reich, who had met with an untimely death in the war. Upon his death, the car became the property of Mohammad, the Emir of Massawa and Eretria.

  Despite traveling with an entourage consisting of four heavily armed body guards, his top general, his Minister of Finance, and his son, the Emir felt isolated and alone. The meeting in Eretria was of his making, and it weighed heavily upon him. It was with seven of the most powerful men in the Middle East. He alone had risked everything—his life, his fortune and his family—to bring them together. They had never before agreed to meet, all seven at once, face to face. Each was the leader of his own kingdom, an emir in his own right; and each had at least one rival attending the meeting. Many had sworn blood oaths against the other. As the Emir rode, he prayed it would be Allah’s will that they all had accepted his invitation and they would be willing to join forces, becoming allies in a just cause—a Holy Jihad.

  Through the narrow slit window of the minaret a dozen feet above the roof tops, the Imam could see a small dust cloud to the west. It was the tell-tale sign that the Emir would arrive shortly. Looking off to the East, the Imam saw the Red Sea shimmering in the glorious morning sun, its surface peppered with dozens of dhows, each with its bright white sail. The sight was so beautiful he couldn’t help but feel that this was surely Allah’s own vision of paradise and a good omen for the meeting to come.

  In the streets below, his flock was heading out to start their day having just finished morning prayers. Most of the worshipers paid little or no attention to the line of two dozen heavily armed men standing across the narrow dirt street from the mosque’s entrance. They avoided eye contact and hurried about their business. In this part of the world, it was best to mind one’s own business, especially when it came to armed men.

  The men were armed with a hodge-podge of weaponry ranging from German Mausers to American M-1 Carbines. A few of the men were even armed with ancient breach loaders. The only coordinated weapon in the group was the large curved sword called a scimitar. Each man carried one, tucked in a black cloth belt that each man wore wrapped around his waist. In addition, each man wore a pair of dark aviator sunglasses with mirrored fronts and a black burnoose, the Arab cloak, which hid the wearer’s face from the sun, sand and identification.

  Once the last of the worshipers had moved off down the street, the armed men moved forward, fanning out until they had blocked all the entrances to both the street and the mosque.

  A few minutes later, the large Mercedes, its top down, slid around a corner at the edge of town. It kicked up a huge cloud of dust as it raced through the busy, early morning streets. The driver honked his horn unceasingly as he sped down the street narrowly missing pedestrians and livestock.

  Standing on the car’s running boards and holding on for dear life, were four large, heavily armed, bearded men. They were the Emir’s personal bodyguards. Each man stood more than two and half meters tall and weighed over two hundred kilos. They were dressed in matching khaki pants and shirts, though through the dust one could not tell. And like the men in the street, they wore a black burnoose and mirrored sunglasses that hid their faces and their eyes.

  As the car approached the mosque, the men blocking the street parted allowing the car to pass, then quickly closed the gap behind it. The car had slid to a stop in front of the mosque, just as the Imam stepped through the large, ornate wooden doors. The Imam was a tall, stringy sort of a man, with deep set eyes and dressed in white cotton robes. He bore a dark scar under his left eye, a reminder of an interrogation he endured at the hands of the Germans during the war. He bowed in deference to the Emir and was immediately engulfed by a huge billowing cloud of dust, kicked up by the car, as it slid to a stop. He coughed several times, trying to breathe as little of the dust as possible, but made no attempt to show his displeasure with the situation.

  When the dust cleared, the reason for the erratic driving became clear. The driver of the car was the Emir’s youngest son. He was ten years old, and the Emir indulged him whenever he could.

  The boy was dressed in a white cotton shirt, black trousers and the traditional kumma. To accommodate his diminutive size since he was barely able to see over the steering wheel, blocks of wood had been tied to the pedals, so that he might reach them more easily. Judging by the breakneck speed and the clear lack of control exhibited by his skidding around each corner, it was questionable whether or
not the boy knew how the brake pedal worked or that the car even had one.

  Seated next to the boy was a large heavyset man. He was dressed in a military uniform fashioned after the ornate style of the French palace guard of the eighteenth century. The uniform’s braids and ribbons fluttered in every direction at once due to the wind whipping over the windscreen. His eyes, hair and beard were gray, his skin a deep brown and his smile had more gap than teeth. A large caliber pistol lay in his lap, as he was unable to fit comfortably in the passenger seat with it in its holster.

  Seated in the rear seat, on the passenger side, was a small, pale, corpse-like, elderly man with thin gray hair and black lifeless eyes. He wore no beard, but sported a gray mustache, which was neatly trimmed and curled up at the ends, handlebar style. He wore thick horned-rimmed glasses and a dark blue, French tailored suit with tails. Like the others, he was covered in dust from head to toe. He held his top hat in his lap, else the wind sent it bounding down the rutted road behind them.

  Next to him was a man of above average in size, with light brown skin. He had dark eyes with dark circles under them, hidden behind his mirrored sunglasses. He sported a dark black beard, peppered with small flecks of gray. His dusty robes and burnoose designated him as the Emir, the equivalent of the king in this small Red Sea kingdom.

  The four, large, heavily armed men stepped from the running boards and stood at the four corners of the car while the heavyset man in the front seat poured himself from the car and waddled around it to open the door for the Emir. The gentleman in the tailored suit remained seated, placing his hat upon his head to give a scant amount of shade.

  As the Emir exited the car, the boy twisted himself sideways in his seat to watch. He wore a huge smile on his face, showing his large, white teeth gleaming in the sunlight. As he passed the boy, the Emir rubbed his head and smiled back.

  Several men, previously hidden, emerged from behind the parapet walls on the roof tops opposite the mosque. After a brief moment, one of them waved his rifle over his head—a signal to the guards by the mosque door that all was clear. With everything secure, the Emir walked briskly to the mosque’s door where he was met by the Imam.

  “Praise be with you, Your Majesty,” the Imam stated, more as a matter of protocol than of respect.

  “And praise be with you,” the Emir replied as protocol required, then stepped past the Imam and entered the mosque. Once inside the doorway, the Emir stopped and turned back towards the Imam who had followed him inside.

  “Mohammed, you are looking well,” the Emir said as he hugged his friend of thirty years.

  “As are you, my old friend,” the Imam replied with a small grin. “And your sons, they are well, also?”

  The Emir stepped back, removed his dust-covered outer robe and placed it on a hook on the wall. He looked past the Imam to the door as it slowly closed. Once alone with the door completely closed, he began to speak.

  “They grow impatient to marry, but I want them to become educated and travel the world. They must become wise and worldly, for the world we once knew is no longer. They will need to learn to deal with the infidels on their terms in order to master the coming war for resources.”

  “I believe it would be pleasing to Allah if we as a people could recapture the glory that was once ours. I am afraid that if we cannot find common ground in that struggle, we will fall prey to the western world. They have become even more intolerable and even more powerful, fresh from their victory over that mad man from Germany. They believe that they are the ones who should decide where the boundaries of our kingdoms should be placed. In their arrogance, they claim to know better than Allah!” The Emir took a quick breath and continued.

  “The British and their United Nations have made a map. They have set, what they are calling, permanent boundaries for our kingdoms, and they say we have no right to challenge them. They believe we are nothing more than nomadic beggars. Children that need a father to guide them!” The Emir bowed his head slightly, quietly uttering, “Forgive me. I am ranting again. How is your son?”

  “He is fine and doing well at his studies. I am hoping that he will decide that becoming a scholar of the faith is his true calling,” the Imam stated.

  “If he should decide his calling lies elsewhere, have him come to my home and I will speak with him,” the Emir stated firmly. “Your daughters will soon be of age, will they not? Are they as beautiful as their mother?”

  “It would be immodest of me to boast of their beauty, but Allah has blessed each with an abundance of his grace, charm and beauty!” the Imam stated with glowing pride.

  “Perhaps they might make my sons happy?” the Emir smiled, and then changed the subject. “Have the others arrived?”

  “Oh, yes. They arrived for morning prayers and were quite generous with their zakat,” the Imam stated as he smiled to himself at the idea of his daughters marrying into the royal clan.

  “As they should,” the Emir stated, turning away from the Imam and stepping towards the interior of the mosque.

  “They are waiting in the room at the end of the passageway.” The Imam pointed the way, but did not move to follow. The Emir took a few more steps, stopped, and turned to face the Imam. “Would you care to join us?” the Emir asked.

  For a brief moment, the Imam stared at the floor, then looking up, replied, “What do I know of worldly matters? I am afraid I would be of little value in your discussions.”

  “A man of God is never of little value,” the Emir replied. “Your council has been wise in the past, and we are in need of wise council. Please reconsider.” The last statement was more of a quiet command than a request. As a subject of His Majesty, the Imam knew he must obey his request. As his friend, he could never refuse him, and so he followed the Emir.

  The Imam opened the door to the room for the Emir of Massawa and then stepped aside, allowing him to enter the room first. In the center of the room was an ornate Persian rug, upon which sat a short table with a circle of cushions around it. The men invited to this gathering were already seated around the table ready to debate their futures.

  “Ah, the Emir is here,” the Emir of Djibouti shouted as he and the Emir of Jizan, both allies of the Emir of Massawa, stood and then bowed. Even though all seven men were of equal status to the Emir in their own lands, they were not in their own lands, and thus the Emir of Massawa would be the only man in the room to be referred to as Emir today, as tradition dictated.

  “Yes, it is I,” the Emir of Massawa spoke mockingly, with a grin on his dark face. “Please, sit, my friends.” Both men sat down as the Emir joined them taking his place in the circle. The Imam closed the door behind them and silently slipped into the right hand corner of the room.

  “It is good to see you again, you old war dog,” the older, overweight, olive-skinned Emir of Jizan, a very small kingdom on the Arabian coast of the Red Sea, announced, as the Emir of Massawa sat down. “How many did we kill that night in the desert? Seven or eight hundred, was it not? Doesn’t matter, the important part was your brilliance and the fact the Germans never saw us coming. It was genius, using the sandstorm as concealment to crawl into their encampment. The sand there still has a pale pink tint to it, even after all these years.”

  His boast embarrassed the Emir, not because it wasn’t true (they all knew it was) but because it was a vain attempt to impress the others in the room by a man who was clearly past his prime.

  “Thank you for accepting my invitation to meet, and please, my friends, let us not talk of old glories but of our blessed future,” the Emir quickly shifted the direction of the conversation. “Let us talk of how we, with the blessing of Allah, will shape the future of all of our kingdoms.”

  “Our future?” groused the Emir of Aden. “Our future is being dictated to us by the infidels who think that we cannot rule ourselves.”

  “This is true,” the Emir responded. “They have drawn a map of our lands as if the lines they draw on a piece of paper will create stabili
ty in the shifting sands. They have also decided that a portion of Transjordan is to be given to the Jews. The Jews have no right to that land. That land and the holy sites of Jerusalem have been ours for centuries.”

  “Would the United Nations and the British give part of England back to the Welsh?” the Emir of Aden questioned. He was dressed in a royal blue business suit from a Savoy Row tailor in London and sported a large, goatee-styled beard.

  “What does a matter of faith matter to you? You don’t care who is in Jerusalem. Jews or Arab, Christian or Muslim matters not to you, as long as you can trade with them and make your fortune by robbing them blind,” the Emir of Yemen, dressed in white robes with a red stripe at the waist, sniped unprovoked at his rival from Aden.

  “My friends, please! We are here to discuss ways of dealing with the infidels, not to bicker among ourselves. To do so only reinforces the views of the British,” the Emir stated frankly. “There will be plenty of time to discuss our personal views after we reach a consensus about our future and the future of the Islamic world. If we do not take steps today, each of our kingdoms may well be lost. The west will overrun our lands with their ideas of freedom and liberty. Our children will forsake Allah for the evil ways of the infidels. We will be swept away by the sands of time.”

  “Please, no more of your drama!” the Emir of Aden exclaimed. “Why would the infidels want our lands? To them, it is just sand and barren rock. The land they covet is the holy land of Jerusalem! That is why they wish to give it to the Jews. They hope that by doing so, they, themselves, might possess it through them. We need to attack the Jews before they can establish even a single foothold on the land. We need to call for a Jihad against the West and the Jews, who are trying to take Jerusalem from us.”