The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

It was hot here on the streets of Tel Aviv, and hotter still where he was going,
of course. The streets were busy with people scurrying about shopping or
pursuing business. There was the expected number of police about, but more
discordant was the occasional civilian toting an Uzi sub-machinegun, doubtless
on his – or her – way to or from a reserve meeting. It was the sort of thing to
shock an American anti-gun nut (or warm the heart of a pro-gun nut). Ryan
figured that the weapons display probably knocked the hell out of
purse-snatching and street crime. Ordinary civil crime, he knew, was pretty rare
here. But terrorist bombings and other less pleasant acts were not. And things
were getting worse instead of better. That wasn't new either.
The Holy Land, sacred to Christians, Muslims, and Jews, he thought.
Historically, it had the misfortune to be at the crossroads between Europe and
Africa on one hand – the Roman, Greek, and Egyptian empires – and Asia on the
other – the Babylonians, Assyrians, and Persians – and one constant fact in
military history was that a crossroads was always contested by somebody. The
rise of Christianity, followed 700 years later by the rise of Islam, hadn't
changed matters very much, though it had redefined the teams somewhat, and given
wider religious significance to the crossroads already contested for three
millennia. And that only made the wars all the more bitter.
It was easy to be cynical about it. The First Crusade, 1086, Ryan thought it
was, had mainly been about extras. Knights and nobles were passionate people,
and produced more offspring than their castles and associated cathedrals could
support. The son of a noble could hardly take up farming, and those not
eliminated by childhood disease had to go somewhere. And when Pope Urban II had
sent out his message that the infidels had overrun the land of Christ, it became
possible for men to launch a war of aggression to reclaim land of religious
importance and to find themselves fiefdoms to rule, peasants to oppress, and
trade routes to the Orient on which to sit and charge their tolls. Whichever
objective might have been the more important probably differed from one heart to
another, but they all had known of both. Jack wondered how many different kinds
of feet had trodden on these streets, and how they had reconciled their
personal-political-commercial objectives with their putatively holy cause.
Doubtless the same had been true of Muslims, of course, since 300 years after
Mohammed the venal had doubtless added their ranks to those of the devout, just
as it had happened in Christianity. Stuck in the middle were the Jews, those not
scattered by the Romans, or those who had found their way back. The Jews had
probably been treated more brutally by the Christians back in the early second
millennium, something else which had since changed, probably more than once.
Like a bone, an immortal bone fought over by endless packs of hungry dogs.
But the reason the bone was not ever destroyed, the reason the dogs kept coming
back over the span of centuries was what the land represented. So much history.
Scores of historical figures had been here, including the Son of God, as the
Catholic part of Ryan believed. Beyond the significance of the very location,
this narrow land bridge between continents and cultures, were thoughts and
ideals and hopes that lived in the minds of men, somehow embodied in the sand
and stones of a singularly unattractive place that only a scorpion could really
love. Jack supposed that there were five great religions in the world, only