The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

een told that it was something completely out of his experience, now he was
being told the reverse. The Commander was bright enough to understand that both
experts were correct.
'Why this place?' Bock explained that, too.
'It would be very gratifying indeed to kill their President.'
'Gratifying, but not necessarily beneficial. We could take the bomb into
Washington, but I evaluate the risks of detection as serious, far too serious.
Commander, my plan must take into consideration the fact that we have only one
device and only one chance. We must therefore minimize the risk of detonation
and base our target selection on convenience more than any other factor.'
'And the German end of the operation?'
'That is more easily accomplished.'
'Will it work?' Qati asked, staring off at the dusty hills of Lebanon.
'It should. I give it a sixty percent chance.'
At the very least, we will punish the Americans and the Russians, the Commander
told himself. The question came next: Is that enough? Qati's face became hard as
he considered the answer to that.
But there was more than one question. Qati thought himself a dying man. The
disease process had its ebbs and flows, like an inexorable tide, but a tide that
never quite restored itself to where it had been a year or a month before.
Though today he felt well, he knew that this was a relative thing. There was as
much chance that his life would end in the next year as there was that Bock's
plan would succeed. Could he allow himself to die and not do everything he could
to see his mission accomplished?
No, and if his own death was likely, what importance should he give to the lives
of others? Were they not all unbelievers?
Günther is an unbeliever, a true infidel. Marvin Russell is another, a pagan.
The people you propose to kill . . . they are not unbelievers. They are People
of the Book, misguided followers of Jesus the Prophet, but also people who
believe in the one God.
Yet Jews were also people of the Book. The Koran proclaimed it. They were the
spiritual ancestors of Islam, as much the children of Abraham as the Arabs. So
much in their religion was the same as his. His war against Israel was not about
religion. It was about his people, cast out of their own land, displaced by
another people who also claimed to be motivated by a religious imperative when
it was really something else.
Qati faced his own beliefs in all their contradictions. Israel was his enemy.
The Americans were his enemy. The Russians were his enemy. That was his personal
theology, and though he might claim to be a Muslim, what ruled his life had
precious little to do with God, however much he might proclaim the opposite to
his followers.
'Proceed with your planning, Günther.'
CHAPTER 20
Competition
At the halfway point of the NFL season, the Vikings and Chargers were still the