Matt Bracken sends this excerpt from his next novel, which is close to completion.





A ten-day passage would give me a chance to compare notes with men who had actually been living through the strife, at least in the British Isles. During one of the first mornings of the voyage, I was in the cockpit with Colonel Rainborow, chatting over tea. I assumed that as an ex-SAS officer and the leader of a private military outfit, he would be as tuned in to current events as it was possible to be.

“So what’s really going on in Europe?” I asked him. “Ireland was as close as I’ve gotten in a few years, and I don’t know how to judge what I hear on the radio. It’s almost all propaganda or fantasy, as far as I can tell.”

“The radio? Yes, it mostly is. Hmmm…let’s see… I assume that you know about the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower?”

“Sure, of course: seven-ten was the French nine-eleven. That was two years ago, at the beginning of the French Civil War. They were both blown up at the same time, on July tenth.”

“Not quite the same time,” said the colonel. “The Louvre was first. A lorry delivered four tons of Semtex. A team of jihadis hijacked an art shipment and made the switch out in the countryside. Drove the lorry into an underground garage and straight up to the receiving dock. The blast killed a thousand tourists and cratered the place.”

“So the Louvre attack was a diversion.”

“Right. It pulled away all the security forces, and then the Eiffel Tower was attacked by terrorists. About twenty of them held a hundred tourists on the observation deck and threatened to kill them all and destroy the tower. After what had just happened at the Louvre, the French had no doubt of their sincerity. The terrorists burned the big French tricolor on top and raised a gigantic black flag of jihad. They declared the Eiffel Tower to be the minaret of the new grand mosque of Muslim Europe. Paris was the capital of the European Caliphate. It was a very sophisticated operation, blowing up the Louvre and then capturing the Eiffel Tower.

“They brought their own television and radio broadcasting equipment with them. Loudspeakers, generators, the lot. Then they made the usual demands: free all the Muslims held in European jails and remove all European forces from Muslim lands. And then on Bastille Day, when none of that had happened, they began pitching the hostages off the tower one by one, starting with an elderly Jew. Goes without saying they raped all the women and children. The Caliphate declared it a major victory for global Islam. The terrorists held out for a week, leading the call to prayer from on top of the tower, black flag and all. And after each call to prayer, another hostage was thrown down. Finally, after nine days, French commandos tried a helicopter assault behind a smoke screen. It was a bloodbath — the terrorists were ready for them. But the terrorists didn’t have enough Semtex to completely destroy the tower. They only had enough to demolish the top third of it. French sappers had dismantled the charges they’d planted lower on the legs.

“Attacking the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower were taken by the French as a declaration of war on France itself. After those twin disasters, nobody spoke of radical Islam anymore, just Islam. Islam was declared to be the enemy of France. The French passed new anti-Islam laws almost overnight. Loyalty oaths were demanded for all Muslims in France. The Sharia no-go zones had to be opened up for inspection and completely disarmed. Military-age Muslim men had to be registered, photographed, and fingerprinted. This was all refused out of hand, of course. Instead, the no-go zones were barricaded, and then the French had car bombs going off in front of schools and police stations. Oh, and rocket attacks, and random mortars. And snipers, of course, the snipers… That lasted until August, when the French Army went full-out medieval. The Muslim no-go Sharia zones were attacked and then destroyed, one after the other. Like I said, they went medieval.”



“I thought the French military was full of Muslims.”

“It was — before the loyalty oaths. The loyalty oaths were rejected in the Sharia zones, but they worked well enough in the military. Almost all of the Muslims in the French Army were thrown out. The ones who didn’t desert and run into the Sharia zones were put behind razor wire as a risk to French society. It surprised everybody how fast the French could build concentration camps when they put their minds to it. This led to even more car bombs and rocket attacks, until the French used heavy artillery on the no-go zones. Leveled them. Parts of Paris and the other French cities look like Stalingrad now, but at least they’re one hundred percent French again. Well, in the north, anyway.”

I said, “There must have been a lot of civilian casualties. When push comes to shove, Muslims always use their women and children as human shields.”

“They did — they always do — but this time it didn’t work. Not when the French were in a fight for their national survival. It doesn’t work at all anymore, actually, their hiding behind human shields. The problem with that strategy is that sooner or later somebody calls your bluff, and that’s exactly what the French military did. And being concentrated in Muslim enclaves, in their no-go Sharia zones, well, that vastly simplified matters when it came time to take care of business and end the mess once and for all.”

A lot of what the colonel said was similar to the rumors I’d heard on the single-sideband. “I didn’t think they had it in them anymore, the French.”

“Well, it finally came down to a matter of national survival. Do or die. Nobody could deny what was happening after the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower. In the end, the French military showed very little mercy. Mercy had been burned out of their hearts. Bastille Day with the black flag of jihad flying above the Eiffel Tower was the turning point. The French weren’t going to put up with car bombs and rockets coming out of the Sharia zones. And there was a growing realization that if the no-go zones were going to burn anyway, it would be simpler just to kill them all in the ruins with artillery than try to coax them out and put them into camps or deport them. A realization by the French military, I mean. It wasn’t the declared national policy, not that I ever heard. But it’s what happened.”

“So, are there still any Muslims in France?”

“There are almost none north of Lyon, but there are millions left in the Marseille Pocket. The French Civil War isn’t over, not by a long shot. It’s still a big mess in the south. The French hardliners want to starve them out, and force them all across the Mediterranean to Africa. The socialists wanted to trade a Muslim zone in the south for a peace treaty. There were talks about population exchanges and repatriation, but they came to nothing. The French socialists don’t have much influence anymore. They’re seen as collaborators for supporting the Muslim invasion in the first place. French Quislings. Traitors. The liberal socialists took a lot of the blame for the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower attacks. Ultra-nationalists are running the show in France today.”

“What about England and the UK? How’s it going there?”

“Well, let’s just say that we’re taking extreme measures to ensure the loyalty of the remaining ex-Muslims. After the Paris attacks, we weren’t going to wait around to see what happened to Buckingham Palace and Big Ben.”

“Ex-Muslims?”

“Those are the only kind we have left in Britain. Ex-Muslims. They had to renounce Islam and pledge eternal loyalty to king and country. And all of the mosques were leveled, plowed under, and sown with pigs’ offal.”

“Pigs’ offal?”

“So help me.”

“What happened to the ones who wouldn’t renounce Islam?”

“They were allowed to leave on ships, most of them. But I’m shedding no tears for the Muslims that left the UK in one piece. They got off easy, and lucky, after what was done to the Christians back in their homelands.”

“You say ‘they’ in the UK and ‘they’ in the Middle East like they’re the same people. Weren’t a lot of your Muslims born in the UK?”

“Doesn’t matter where they were born, they’re all one and the same. It’s how they always looked at the world anyway, Islam versus the rest. The worldwide Umma, and all that rot. In the end, the Muslims didn’t want to assimilate, they didn’t want to become Britons at all. They came to conquer, or rather, to be parasites until they killed their host and took over that way. The war of the womb, outbreeding us five to one. They just wanted to live on the dole in their Sharia zones and force Islam down everybody’s throat, step by step. Well, that non-assimilation turned out to be a double-edged sword. They didn’t want to become British? Fine. They identified as Muslims first? Great. That made it easier to bin them all when it came down to them or us. They were never our countrymen. They were just invaders, and in the end we spit them out.”

“Even the ones who were born in the UK?”

“They all had to go, unless they renounced Islam, renounced Sharia, and pledged loyalty to the king. Even the so-called white Muslims, the converts. And just like in France, we started with cleaning up the military.”

“So the only ones that are left in England are — ”

“The only ones left are the ex-Muslims.”

“But how can you trust them? You know they’re allowed to lie to infidels.”

“Of course I know that, everybody does. But they had to swear the pledge while standing on the Saudi flag, facing the Union Jack and a picture of the king. You know what’s written on the Saudi flag, right?”

“The main Muslim prayer, the Shahada: ‘There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his messenger.’ The green Saudi flag is basically the same as the black flag of jihad, except for the color.”

“Right. They have to wipe their feet on the Shahada flag, spit on it, and pledge loyalty to king and country. And it’s all on video. Tends to separate the sheep from the goats, knowing they can never live among practicing Muslims ever again. In the end, most of them went through the ritual. And most of them said they were glad to do it.”

“Even so, Colonel, I wouldn’t trust them. The Koran tells them to lie to infidels if it helps to spread Islam.”

“The sincere ex-Muslims are the best at sniffing out the fakers. They know that if there’s any more Muslim terrorism in the UK, they’ll all be deported next time — every last one of them. And they don’t want to go back, oh no, they don’t want to go back. Being dropped off on a deserted stretch of the Libyan beach is not very pleasant, I’d imagine. And after they take the king’s oath standing on the Saudi flag, it’s a death sentence if they’re ever sent back to a Muslim country. It’s all on video. They know full well they have the most to lose from any more Muslim terrorism in Britain. They’re the best ferrets we have, the sincere ex-Muslims. Most of them became Christians, just prove their loyalty even more strongly. Anyway, there’s not many left. Most of them went home on the ships. Better than ninety percent. The ex-Muslims who are left are a good lot, by and large. King and country.”

“It’s hard to believe they’d just agree to leave like that.”

“They didn’t have much choice about it. Remember, this all happened soon after Paris and the start of the French Civil War. We were all watching it on television, hour by hour. The Muslims in the UK knew that if we went in hard, like the French Army did, the only alternative to deportation was dying in the rubble. The French example was staring them in the face. Anyway, most of them are still alive — which is more than you can say for the Christians in the Middle East.”

Matthew Bracken was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1957, and attended the University of Virginia, where he received a BA in Russian Studies and was commissioned as a naval officer in 1979. Later in that year he graduated from Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training, and in 1983 he led a Naval Special Warfare detachment to Beirut, Lebanon. Since then he’s been a welder, boat builder, charter captain, ocean sailor, essayist and novelist. He lives in Florida. Links to his short stories and essays may be found at EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com. For his previous essays, see the Matthew Bracken Archives.