Free Systemic Shock by Dean Ing Page A

entirely appropriate, for the Old Testament specified the precious cargo which Moses had taken when leaving Egypt. The bones of Joseph had formalized one Exodus, and now they had precipitated another.
    Before the human tidal wave settled, AIR military leaders were arguing furiously with the civilian majlis commanding them. It was too late, they railed; the first wave of fighter-bombers was almost airborne; the frigates were off Port Said and Libyan captains might not be willing to honor an abort signal.
    But Islam's spiritual leaders knew the Marxist veneer over their people was barely epidermal. In their bones, devout Moslems might reject their leaders, perhaps question their own devotion, once they saw on television that Medina, Mecca, and Q'om were suffering unspeakable defilements before being turned into radioactive craters.
    As one Knesset member put it: "Given the certainty that we've taken the Masjid Al Haram and might let the world watch on TV while we cover the Ka'aba with pigskin, I think they'd be willing to defer doomsday. Think about it: once the Holy of Holies has been blown into the ionosphere, a Moslem would have to pray in all directions."
    The point was well-taken by top-level majlis of the AIR. If Israelis would permit frequent inspection to verify the Jewish claim that no harm had yet come to the shrines of Mohammed and Khomeini, the majlis would cancel the attack on Israel's abandoned soil. The abandonment had not been complete enough to give the majlis hope that Moslem squatters could infiltrate the place. Sedom and Nazareth and Haifa still rang with the clangor of Israel's business, but now a business run exclusively by warriors of both sexes. In the matter of her vulnerable citizens, Israel had cleared her decks for action. The AIR saw it as a stalemate, though Israel could still lose on Cyprus. The jehad would have to wait…

Chapter Twenty-Three
    Our Atlantic coast sunrise was a many-splendored thing on Monday, thanks to micron-sized hunks of Cape Cod and Bethesda and Cocoa Beach that floated in countless quadrillions toward the dawn. Not many people admired it. Most survivors were too busy retching, or wondering how to filter death-laden air once they figured out a way to pump it into their rural root cellars. Or tallying candy bars and drinkables against the headcount in a few mass transit tunnels. Or cursing our lack of Civil Defense which, like charity, begins at home. Or… but the list was worse than endless; it was pointless. Unlike Moscow and Kiev, American cities had not spent the funds to preserve flesh and blood under firestorms fifty klicks in diameter that consumed every ignitable scrap aboveground.
    Raised to kindling temperature by nuclear airbursts, trees and plastic facades contributed to monstrous updrafts that sucked air from suburbs; which grew to two-hundred-klick winds roaring across urban structures at a thousand degrees Celsius, mercifully asphyxiating millions before incinerating their remains. As citizens of Tokyo and Dresden had learned by 1945, the immediate danger was firestorm.
    Toward the midwest, Americans fared better. Here we were less centralized, with more rural homes dependent on their own solar power, more homeowners who knew how to cannibalize a car's electrical system and to jury-rig a bellows air-pump with cardboard and tape. Here were fewer prime targets, more well-stocked pantries.
    The Pacific coast was a patchwork; rubble from San Diego to Santa Barbara, emulating the Boston-to-Norfolk devastation, and an unchanged, achingly lovely stillness from Point Arena to Arcata where Chinese fallout had not yet reached.
    Least affected of the American homeland on Monday was the intermountain region from the Sierra-Cascades to the great plains. Albuquerque and the Pueblo-Denver strip were smouldering hulks, of course. The MX sites in Nevada and south of Minot had taken cannonades of nuclear thunder. But the MX called for ground-burst bombs. Though anything downwind