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and combatants began exiting the ruined city. Any who came out with weapons in
their hands, or who otherwise attempted to
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fight were immediately shot down and killed.
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Quickly enough, all who came out were unarmed and nonbelligerent.
By the afternoon on the 9th, no major structure was left standing in the city.
By noon on the 10th, when the bombing campaign ended, not one stone was left
upon another within Mecca.
An eerie silence fell across the face of the countryside in and around the
holy city. There was not so much as a cry or a moan coming from the ruins.
Heaven seemed to have answered the assault with a dead-calm.
That afternoon, allied scout, EOD and medic teams entered the city. Over a two
day period, fewer than
500 injured were pulled from the mounds of rubble. By the 14thof June, all
rescue and recovery efforts ceased. The allies did not intend to rebuild
Mecca& they intended to send a message.
Over one hundred U.S. Army D-9 caterpillar bulldozers then appeared on the
perimeter around the city and converged on it. They literally covered over the
debris and smoothed it out in two days time. A flat, desolate landscape then
occupied the ground where once Mecca stood. All debris, all ruined or
discarded weapons-all bodies-had been buried there.
Atop this soil the allies liberally sprinkled salt and then soaked the ground
in swine fat. Around the perimeter of the once great city, and interspersed
every five hundred yards within, the following metal signs were erected:
Here stood Mecca, until it was occupied by barbarians, terrorists and
desecrators and those who harbored them, who then committed atrocities against
the United States of America and the United
Kingdom and their allies.
Now there is nothing here but a desolation of pig-fat and salt.
Let the fate of this once great city be a clear message to all those who would
desecrate that which is holy and who would consider committing similar
atrocities against United States or United Kingdom forces, personnel or
civilians.
To the innocent we allowed to escape we say-De Oppresso Libre!
To the barbarians who died here we say-Sic Simper Tyranis!
Sayeed could still see those signs in his mind's eye. He could not help but
mourn the loss of the city and could also not help but wonder how he could
motivate the faithful to keep on fighting& to find strength in praying five
times a day to such a place, a place that was now nothing more than a smoking,
smoldering wasteland.
For the first time in his life his faith wavered& and it shook him to the core.
Then& a piercing pain in his side and heart& an all consuming pain that filled
him first with rage& and then with strength.
He would have to leave Tehran& but he knew where he would go, and he knew to
what the rest of his life would be devoted.
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In many ways, it would be devoted to the same goal he had dedicated himself to
for the last many years.
But now the fight to unite the world under the banner of Islam would have to
take on a new form, and it could only do that after he had reconstituted his
strength in some area of the world not yet assailed so devastatingly by his
enemies, where he could rebuild the faith and the institutions that would soon
be lost to him here.
Chapter 2
There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, can circumvent or hinder or control
the firm resolve of a determined soul Ella Wilcox
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July 2, 2010, 14:55, Local Time
Large Inner Courtyard
Principle Hamadan Mosque
Hamadan, Greater Islamic Republic
Hamadanwas a smaller city in the northwestern part of the former Iran that was
strategically out of the way and off the beaten path. As Allied forces passed
to the North of it in their pursuit of the GIR Armies that had, until
recently, been successfully holding back the Allied onslaught near Tabriz,
Hamadan had not been directly attacked. As the allied breakthrough to the
east of Qom threatened Tehran from a different axis, and as that same
breakthrough threatened the envelopment and destruction of the GIR armies in
Tabriz headed by the young General Selim, Selim's forces had been forced to
rapidly fall back towards
Tehran, with the allied forces fast on their heals.
As the large allied offensive and GIR retreat occurred to the north, Hamadan
experienced relatively light bombing and shelling of its local GIR garrison by
allied peripheral forces as they passed. The same type of thing was occurring
with many cities throughout the former Iraq and Iran.
Now, in several of these bypassed cities, with apparently little allied
presence, the local garrisons and those still faithful to Hassan Sayeed's
vision were gathering and preparing to fight. The local clerics were whipping
them up into a frenzy despite, and in some cases because of, what had occurred
at Mecca in
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June.
One of those clerics, who had amassed his own personal militia of over twenty
thousand well provisioned men, was the Ayatollah Sheik Aman Saldi. He was
relatively young, but fiercely loyal to
Hassan Sayeed, and wholly committed to resisting and defeating any infidels
coming within his reach. On this day, he was speaking to ten thousand of his
own followers, and a large number of local citizens and members of the local
garrison that had gathered within the walls of the holy mosque in Hamadan to
hear him.
My brothers, the Americans and their running dogs, in their arrogance, have
made yet another fatal mistake. Similar to their actions six and seven years
ago in Iraq during their so-called Operation Iraqi
Freedom, they have bypassed many tens of thousands of the faithful, falsely
believing that we will be overly impressed with their technology and the
swiftness of their advance, and that we will sit idly by while they continue
to attack, oppress and kill our brothers and sisters of faith and defile
Allah.
They have their automons in the air above us to watch over and contain us.
Just look above yourselves now and you are sure to see them. Their incessant
buzzing is heard night and day. They think that these flies will deter us and
frighten us into inaction.
But they could not be more wrong.
I say to you, to those faithful gathered here this day, to all of those
within the sound of my voice, or who will hear of it later& we are now behind
the enemy lines, and we will wage Jihad upon them and their supply lines until
the head of their military snake is left toothless in the center of our land.
Then, we shall sever that head and stomp it to death!
The cheering was wild. The militia and local garrison fired incessantly into
the air. They knew that the local television crews, who were filming the
event, would beam the images of this defiant gathering to the world. They
hoped and believed that other faithful followers of Allah and the great Imam
Sayeed would see it and take heart& and rise up behind the allied armies.
& but they could not have been more wrong.
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It was true, the allies, and particularly the Americans, had left unmanned
aerial vehicles (UAVs) in place to watch over the bypassed cities and forces.
The Americans named this operation
Ruthless Sentinel
.
With this operation, as had been the case with the surrounding of and
destruction of Mecca, the
Americans and their allies had learned well from their experiences in Iraq in
2003 and 2004, and from their experiences in the years of warfare that had
ensued. They had modified their operational plans, adjusted their thinking and
prepared procedures and scenarios accordingly. The UAVs were not just there to
watch over the potential belligerents and provide surveillance. As the
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