The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

three of which had really spread beyond their own point of origin. Those three
had their home within a few miles of where he stood.
So, of course, this is where they fight wars.
The blasphemy was stunning. Monotheism had been born here, hadn't it? Starting
with the Jews, and built upon by Christians and Muslims, here was the place
where the idea had caught on. The Jewish people – Israelites seemed too strange
a term – had defended their faith with stubborn ferocity for thousands of years,
surviving everything the animists and pagans could throw at them, and then
facing their sternest tests at the hands of religions grown on the ideas that
they had defended. It hardly seemed fair – it wasn't fair at all, of course –
but religious wars were the most barbaric of all. If one were fighting for God
Himself, then one could do nearly anything. One's enemies in such a war were
also fighting against God, a hateful and damnable thing. To dispute the
authority of Authority itself – well, each soldier could see himself as God's
own avenging sword. There could be no restraint. One's actions to chastise the
enemy/sinner were sanctioned as thoroughly as anything could be. Rapine,
plunder, slaughter, all the basest crimes of man would become something more
than right – made into a duty, a Holy Cause, not sins at all. Not just being
paid to do terrible things, not just sinning because sin felt good, but being
told that you could literally get away with anything, because God really was on
your side. They even took it to the grave. In England, knights who had served in
the Crusades were buried under stone effigies whose legs were crossed instead of
lying side by side – the mark of a holy crusader – so that all eternity could
know that they'd served their time in God's name, wetting their swords in
children's blood, raping anything that might have caught their lonely eyes, and
stealing whatever wasn't set firmly in the ground. All sides. The Jews mainly as
victims, but taking their part on the hilt end of the sword when they got the
chance, because all men were alike in their virtues and vices.
The bastards must have loved it, Jack thought bleakly, watching a traffic cop
settling a dispute at a busy corner. There must have been some genuinely good
men back then. What did they do? What did they think? I wonder what God thought?
But Ryan wasn't a priest or a rabbi or an imam. Ryan was a senior intelligence
officer, an instrument of his country, an observer and reporter of information.
He continued looking around, and forgot about history for the moment.
The people were dressed for the oppressive heat, and the bustle of the streets
made him think of Manhattan. So many of them had portable radios. He passed a
sidewalk restaurant and saw no less than ten people listening to an hourly news
broadcast. Jack had to smile at that. His kind of people. When driving his car,
the radio was always tuned to an all-news D.C. station. The eyes he saw
flickered about. The level of alertness was so pervasive that it took him a few
moments to grasp it. Like the eyes of his own security guard. Looking for
trouble. Well, that made sense. The incident on Temple Mount had not sparked a
wave of violence, but such a wave was expected – it did not surprise Ryan that
the people in his sight failed to recognize the greater threat to them that came
from the absence of violence. Israel had a myopia of outlook that was not hard
to comprehend. The Israelis, surrounded by countries that had every reason to
see the Jewish state immolated, had elevated paranoia to an art form, and