It known that the second and third goals were met. Indeed, no single trace remains of the Kabaa or the Grand Mosque. It is believed that the first and fourth were met as well. Indeed, counting not merely the direct victims of the attacks, but adding to that those who subsequently died of starvation, disease, lack of potable water, lack of medical care for injuries, and the complete breakdown of anything approaching civilization in the Islamic world, it is very likely that total deaths approached eight hundred million, or roughly two hundred to one.
It was the greatest mass murder in history.
Nor should it have surprised anyone. It was not only predictable; it had been predicted. As one Lee Harris, a sophont of the day had put it:
In other words, the only effect on America of a continuation of September 11-style attacks would be an increasingly repressive state apparatus domestically and a populist home front demand for increasingly severe retaliation against those nations supporting or hiding terrorists. But neither one of these reactions would seriously undermine the strength of the United States—indeed, it is quite evident that further attacks would continue to unite the overwhelming majority of the American population, creating an irresistible "general will" to eradicate terrorism by any means necessary, including the most brutal and ruthless.
* * *
Chapter XXIX
The first imperial acquisition, outside of the lodgment on the Arabian peninsula, was Canada. It was that former state's misfortune that, while the United States had been her last line of defense, Canada had been America's first line.
Buckman had hinted all along that Canada must move to eliminate the threat its Moslems presented to the United States. These tacit warnings were ignored, for the most part, though some Canadians living in the United States or who had lived there, tried desperately to warn their countrymen that America was in utter earnest, that it was no longer in a mood to accept the threat Canada's insistence on diversity presented. It had taken fewer than forty terrorists to introduce the nuclear weapons used in the Three Cities Attacks. It was believe that Canada contained more than four thousand more.
Even so, it took a combination of three miscalculations to make the United States move. The core states of the European Union broke diplomatic relations with America within hours of the launch of the retaliatory attacks. Canada, always one with the EU in spirit if not in fact or law, did likewise. Cooperation in terms of border control ceased. The effect of this, though, in the case of Canada, was to rob the United States of any sense of security on its northern border.
The second miscalculation was to admit into Canada some two millions of mainly Moslem refugees from the irradiated ruins of Islamic civilization. A few of these attempted cross-border operations against the United States. Most of these Canada put down. It only took one failure, however, to give the United States all the excuse it needed to invade.
The final miscalculation, on Canada's part, was the assumption that the United Kingdom could somehow dissuade the United States from taking action. The UK, under the new monarchy, busily rounding up its own Moslems and fearful of terrorists entering the Kingdom from Canada, was simply not interested.
Nineteen Regular Army divisions, one dozen divisions of the Army National Guard, plus the Second and Fourth Marine Divisions, rolled across the border just before dawn on 11 May, 2020.
Despite the gallant resistance put up by the main elements of the Canadian Forces, notably the Royal 22nd and Twelfth Armored, which died in defense of Quebec City, the Royal Canadian Regiment and Royal Canadian Dragoons, shattered in the forlorn defense of Ottawa, and the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry and Lord Strathcona's Horse, butchered in detail in a hopeless defense of the long western border, Canada—rather the thin strip of well-populated area that roughly paralleled the border with the United States—fell quickly.
It is both interesting and sad to note that it was only those most despised by the government of Canada, and its ruling party, who actually proved willing to defend that government. Those who had most despised their own forces, and who had themselves signally failed to fight, soon found themselves the center of attention of a country-wide sweep. Almost as quickly they found themselves in various well-guarded logging and mining camps in the cold, cold lands of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories . . .
* * *
Chapter XXXII
Mexico had been a vital trading partner for the United States for many decades. This trade continued, even after the completion of the wall between the two countries, until the Revolution broke out and grew beyond the ability of the government of Mexico to handle.
Even then, President (now, as a practical matter, given the repeal of the 22nd Amendment and the control he exercised over every aspect of American life, "for life") Buckman did not intervene. Canada, with its thirty-five-odd-million people, not all of them averse to American occupation and
Anschluss
, had been comparatively easy. Mexico, with one hundred and thirty million people—almost to a man and woman loathing the United States, and not without reason—was a patently tougher case.
Nonetheless, following a series of attacks on the wall between the countries, Buckman ordered the armed forces to intervene. It was to be fifteen years and as many as ten million lives, before anyone could, with a straight face, call Mexico pacified . . .
* * *
Chapter XXXIV
The precedent of Mexico established, Buckman felt very comfortable invading Cuba, not because there were any numbers of Moslems there and not because it represented a threat, but merely because he was a child of the Cold War and could hold a grudge.
It was only that the United States armed forces were so tied down in Cuba, Mexico, Canada, and the Arabian peninsula that allowed the Latin and Caribbean states to retain that measure of independence they enjoy today. The price of retaining that independence was, however, high. Each remaining independent nation (except for Brazil which was frankly too large and powerful to be all that easily intimidated) was required to sign on to a heavily amended update of the Rio Pact. This Protocol, as it was called, required each to expel or intern any Moslems found within its borders, to provide either military formations for the use of the United States, or their equivalent value in money or goods and, in the latter case, to permit free recruiting by the United States. The Latin states were also required to submit all questions of foreign policy to the United States for approval, and to suppress within their borders any movement founded upon disloyalty or opposition to the United States.
As Buckman said, at the convention, "I can't take you all on at once. We all know this. But I can knock you off one or two at a time. Choose wisely."
In the end, only Venezuela chose unwisely. It was transformed from a sovereign state to an imperial province in 2023. Most of the troops for the expedition were other Latins, acting under American command pursuant to the 2022 Protocol to the Rio Pact . . .
* * *
Afterword
It would have been pleasant to report, had it come to pass, that President Buckman had somehow been overthrown, and that he had been tried for his many crimes and hanged. Sadly, this was not to be. Rather, he passed away quietly one night in 2036, leaving us his legacy: an empire we don't want yet can't get rid of, the enmity of most of the world, a crushing military burden, and damage to our traditional civil liberties that has yet to be fully undone and may never be.
As pleasant as it might have been, however, and as pleasant at it may be to contemplate, in all probability it would not have mattered. Once the United States let down its guard while at the same time not removing—even assuming it was possible to remove—the causes and reasons that caused us to be hated throughout the Moslem world, the Three Cities attacks became inevitable. Once those attacks took place, Buckman, or someone just like him by another name, became equally inevitable.
Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loving kindness and truth; who keeps loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations."
—Exodus 34: 6-7
Curiously enough, paper books had never gone out of style. Perhaps this was because there was something comforting about the solidity of a book. Perhaps it was because, as many said, books made attractive wall coverings. Perhaps it was merely that books suited the human mind and body in a way that screen images and holographic projections simply could not. Whatever the case, books were still commonly printed in dead-tree format.
Caruthers had made a present of such a book to Hamilton, just as the latter had boarded the airship at Reagan National.
"I know you think we're dirty, John," Caruthers had said. "And you're right; we are. But the difference between us and the people we are fighting is that we have a chance to get better on our own . . . and they don't and never will. Here's proof that we might get better."
It was a huge book,
Empire Rising
, more than twelve hundred pages, exclusive of appendices, end notes, tables, bibliography and photographs. Hamilton had spent most of the three-day trip to Cape Town engrossed in it.
Hamilton closed the book just as the airship slid over the coastline on its way to the aerodrome northeast of Cape Town. From this altitude, the entire scene looked very neat, almost antiseptic. He knew, from both his readings and his instruction at OSI headquarters, that the core of the place was anything but antiseptic. Moslems might hate the American Empire, a feeling that was fully reciprocated, but the every day, present tense loathing of most African blacks and whites for each other put those American-Moslem antipathies in the shade for sheer intensity, if not necessarily for destructiveness.
Looking down at the book before sliding it into his carryall, Hamilton thought,
Well . . . it's got to be a good step that things like this can be published again. After ninety years of censorship, perhaps we've gotten over the Three Cities.
In his heart though, however much he wanted to, he didn't believe it.
"
Meneer
De Wet?" the black driver from Koop Human Resources asked, as Hamilton stepped out of the underground corridor that connected the airship landing pit with the main terminal. The driver was medium height, balding, with a neatly trimmed beard and an expansive gut. Hamilton suspected the fat concealed an impressive amount of muscle.
"Yes," Hamilton answered. He'd been expecting to be picked up. Almost he offered his hand to the driver before the endless hours of drill in South African customs reasserted itself. "I'm De Wet."
"Caruthers told me to say, 'Hi,'" the driver said, in Bronx-accented English. Hamilton immediately felt a profound sense of relief. "You'll be working for me. My name here is Bonginkosi Mathebula . . . and if I see you almost offer me your hand again, I will break it. Control yourself,
baas
. My friends call me 'Bongo.' That's good enough.
"Officially," Bongo continued, "I am your indentured manservant. Unofficially, I'm in charge. Don't forget it. If we didn't need a reliable white front man, you wouldn't even be here."
* * *
The drive to the company guesthouse on the outskirts of Cape Town was long. Bongo drove while Hamilton sat in back. The black used the opportunity to lecture.
"A century and a half ago, the whites were on top. You should already have known that but one can never tell what the idiots at Langley may forget to pass on.
"They'd have stayed there, too," Bongo continued, "through a combination of pigheaded determination and bloody-minded ruthlessness. Ultimately, they were pretty sure that as long as the black opposition was supported by and in turn supported the communists, the west would never let white South Africa go under. That was true, too, until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late twentieth century. This made the value of the white regime to the anti-Soviet coalition drop like a lead weight.
"The Boers and the Cape English saw the writing on the walls then and, facing a desperate race war with no possibility of help from their racial kin, they made the best deal they could.
"Unfortunately for South Africa, while not all the whites' fears came to pass, enough of them did. After majority rule was instituted, whites fled the country in droves. Some of them left because of the crime. Other got sick of nepotism and corruption masquerading as affirmative action. I'm sure still others left in sheer funk at not being the local master race anymore.