ryethenovel Chapter 273 Desert Wind Rises
Chapter 273 Desert Wind Rises
August 1, 1990, late at night.
Presidential Palace in Baghdad, Iraq.
The hot, dry monsoon winds along the Euphrates River howled outside the bulletproof glass.
In the center of the office area stands a giant solid wood military sand table, covering more than ten square meters. The coastline of the Persian Gulf is clearly depicted under the vertical illumination of distributed spotlights from above.
Saddam Hussein stands on the south edge of the sand table.
He was wearing a dark green military uniform without any rank insignia. Between the rough index and middle fingers of his right hand was a handmade cigar that had been flown in from Havana, Cuba through special channels.
A dark red glow flickered at the tip of the cigar. Grayish-white smoke swirled and rose in the cold air, blurring the outline of his thick beard.
His gaze passed over the course of the Tigris River on the sand table, lingering for a long time on the red dots representing the border of Kuwait.
The books are completely empty.
The eight-year Iran-Iraq War not only depleted the country's once abundant foreign exchange reserves but also left behind a massive debt slump of hundreds of billions of dollars. The majority of these debts are held by the tiny southern nation of Kuwait.
Today, Kuwait is not only frequently pressing for repayment of its debts at regional meetings, but it is also engaging in rampant overproduction in the Gulf oil-producing region. The massive influx of crude oil into the market has driven international benchmark oil prices down to a low of $14 per barrel. They are even using inclined drilling technology to continuously extract Iraq's underground crude oil reserves at the Rumaila oil field, located on the border between the two countries.
For a country with a weak industrial base that relies entirely on crude oil exports to maintain its regime and supply its million-strong army, a halving of oil prices means cutting off its last lifeline.
This is a slow strangulation.
If this continues, the country will be slowly worn down and killed.
He took a deep drag on his cigar. The strong, pungent smell of burning tobacco irritated his trachea.
The gaze follows the undulating terrain on the sand table, moving southwards.
If troops were ordered to cross that fragile border and seize that land, along with its high-yield oil fields and deep-water ports, Washington politicians would be outraged, and the White House would certainly not stand idly by while one-fifth of the world's oil reserves fall into the hands of others. Armed intervention by the US military would almost certainly be the obvious and inevitable option.
Saddam Hussein looked at the red chess pieces on the sand table representing Iraq's million-strong army, and the densely packed armored positions representing thousands of T-72 main battle tanks and heavy artillery.
He has fought his way through the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq War, a feat that those incompetent politicians sitting in offices cannot match.
They may be very knowledgeable about politics or finance, but they don't understand war.
The essence of war is the tug-of-war in trenches, the frontal assault of armored formations, and the attrition of countless flesh and blood in artillery fire.
Do Americans really dare to fight such a war?
The quagmire of the Vietnam War, which began more than a decade ago, still lingers painfully within that superpower. Those politicians sitting in the Oval Office, calculating midterm election votes all day, simply cannot afford the political cost of sending ten thousand, or even five thousand, body bags back home.
If a million-strong army were deployed deep within the Kuwaiti desert, the entire desert could be transformed into a dreaded meat grinder, striking fear into the hearts of all invaders.
Washington's bottom line will inevitably be forced to back down in the face of long casualty figures, thus being forced to sit at the negotiating table and recognize Baghdad's de facto control over that land.
The key to this battle lies in their ability to quickly gain actual control of key areas while simultaneously holding off the American offensive for a period of time. Once the casualty figures rise, the American offensive will naturally crumble on its own.
He had calculated this account very clearly.
With a slight twitch of his fingers, Saddam pressed the half-burnt cigar into the pure copper ashtray on the table.
He raised his head, his gaze passing over the sand table to the highest-ranking commander of the Republican Guard standing solemnly in the shadows of the room.
"Crossing the border."
His voice was deep.
"Take back our access to the sea."
……
"Snap."
"Snap."
The crisp sound of ice crystals shattering echoed in the empty courtyard.
Karuizawa, Tsunematsu Villa.
On the afternoon of August 2nd, the sun was shining brightly.
The cicadas have spread across the mountains and fields, their continuous chirping echoing in the warm air.
Shuichi returned to Tokyo yesterday to personally oversee the transfer of debts owed by semiconductor companies spun off from the city bank.
In the vast backyard of the mountain villa, only Saionji Satsuki remained.
She was wearing a loose white cotton T-shirt, barefoot, and casually sitting on the edge of the rim with her knees bent.
On the low rosewood table in front of me sat an old-fashioned hand-cranked cast iron ice shaver from the early Showa era. The machine's heavy brass wheels gleamed with a warm metallic sheen in the sunlight.
Satsuki held the base of the machine with her left hand and gripped the wooden crank with her right, turning it with some difficulty.
Sharp steel blades sliced through the bottom layer of the ice. Fine, snowflake-like ice crystals drifted down from the outlet, gradually piling up into a miniature white iceberg in the transparent glass bowl below.
From the corner of the wooden corridor, came the sound of steady and very light footsteps.
Fujita walked over on the floor and stopped three steps away from the low table.
He held a somewhat bulky black satellite phone in his hand. The encryption indicator light on the top of the device was flashing red once per second.
"Young Miss".
Fujita bowed slightly, his voice very low.
"Top-secret communications just transmitted from the Middle East branch of the Saionji Intelligence System (SIS). Multiple sources have completed cross-verification."
He grasped the edges of the satellite phone with both hands and handed it over.
"At 2:00 AM Middle East time, the armored vanguard of the Iraqi Republican Guard has broken through the Kuwaiti border checkpoints and entered Kuwaiti territory along the entire front."
"The war has begun."
The chirping of cicadas echoed throughout the courtyard.
Satsuki's right hand, gripping the brass crank handle, didn't pause. The turntable continued to rotate at a steady speed.
"Snap. Snap."
Fine ice crystals continued to fall, making the iceberg in the glass bowl appear fuller and rounder.
Until the last piece of ice fell into the bowl.
She loosened the brass crank handle.
Pick up a small white porcelain jar placed next to the low rosewood table.
"Hmm...it's started."
A porcelain spoon was inserted into the jar, scooping up a spoonful of thick Shizuoka Uji matcha syrup.
With a slight tilt of the wrist, the deep green syrup dripped down the rim of the spoon, evenly basting the top of the pure white shaved ice piled up like a small mountain. Constrained by its high density, the syrup slowly seeped and spread towards the bottom, following the tiny cracks in the ice crystals.
"Notify New York."
Satsuki put down the porcelain spoon, picked up the long-handled wooden spoon next to her, and gently pressed it on the iceberg.
She scooped up a small spoonful of crushed ice covered in matcha syrup and put it in her mouth.
"Well……"
The cool touch, mixed with the slightly bitter aftertaste of matcha, melted instantly on her tongue. She closed her eyes contentedly, her legs swinging gently against the edge of the rim. A tiny drop of emerald green syrup accidentally smeared onto the corner of her lips.
She stuck out her tongue and gently rolled the sweetness from the corner of her mouth into her mouth.
"Fujita, you can talk to Frank later."
As she continued to stir the still-unmelted ice in the glass bowl with a long-handled wooden spoon, she casually gave instructions in a calm tone, interspersed with the subtle sounds of biting ice crystals.
"Tell Frank not to touch the NYMEX open market. Be careful to avoid the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's position limit tracking."
"Now that the gunfire has started, the Pentagon will soon send large numbers of infantry and carrier strike groups into the Persian Gulf. The bigwigs in Congress also want to make money, and the scale of this war will be magnified infinitely by politicians in Washington. The ceiling for oil prices is still far from being seen."
Satsuki stuffed another large spoonful of shaved ice into her mouth, but suddenly shrank her neck, as if she had been frozen.
She frowned slightly, raised her hand to press her temples, paused for two or three seconds to recover from the cold sensation, and then continued to speak.
"Phew... Let's go execute the off-site betting scheme."
"Keep a close eye on Soros' Quantum Fund, and also on Paul Tudor Jones's channels. They are more eager than we are to profit from this war."
"Activate the ISDA master agreement we signed earlier. Buy total return swap contracts for forward crude oil call options, following the positions of those US domestic giants."
"Break the funds into extremely small, scattered orders. Use dark pool gateways to evenly distribute betting agreements to the proprietary trading desks of institutions like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and Lehman Brothers. Enter the market right at the peak of Soros's fund inflows... Don't leave even a single cent's worth of independent data spikes for regulators."
Fujita Tsuyoshi bowed slightly.
"Yes, Miss. I will relay everything to Mr. Frank later."
"in addition."
Satsuki looked at the shadows of the trees swaying in the wind in the courtyard, and then put another bite of shaved ice into her mouth.
"Notify Dojima to enter."
……
The perimeter of Yokota Air Base, a U.S. military base in Japan. SA Logistics' dedicated air dispatch center.
Beneath the towering steel dome, hundreds of industrial-grade metal halide lamps illuminate this tens of thousands of square meters of warehouse space, making it appear almost white.
Several yellow heavy-duty electric forklifts are moving across the smooth epoxy resin floor. The forklift forks lift heavy-duty resin protective boxes and aviation aluminum boxes, each up to two meters long, and place them into the cargo compartment of a container truck.
On the outside of the container, in addition to the black commercial logo of "SA Global Engineering & Rescue", the most conspicuous position is marked with a "Priority Military Cargo" barcode with the U.S. Pentagon emblem and a customs exemption seal.
With the political backing of the K Street lobbying group in Washington and the Carlyle Group's private equity firm, this shipment of munitions, enough to arm a light infantry battalion, was directly designated by the U.S. Department of Defense as "essential defense equipment for high-value overseas corporate assets." With this legitimate official outsourcing approval, the supplies will completely bypass Japanese customs jurisdiction and be shipped out of the country directly via military shipping routes from U.S. military bases in Japan.
Dojima Iwao stood in the open area in front of the loading and unloading area.
He wore a dark gray waterproof softshell tactical jacket, paired with khaki cargo pants. His sand-colored tactical boots were firmly planted on the ground.
Directly in front of him stood hundreds of elite members of the SA Security Department's Special Operations Team, arrayed in a square formation. Around their necks hung nylon lanyards with retractable buckles, the ends of which were connected to SA Group hard plastic identification cards bearing their photos and chips.
Dojima Iwao's gaze slowly swept across the formation.
"Check all the inside pockets."
Dojima Iwao's voice was calm and steady, drowning out the noise of the forklift motors running around him.
"Japanese passport, and that blue war zone pass. When we arrived at Dhahran port in Saudi Arabia, the Pentagon compliance officer wanted to see the original."
A slight rustling sound of fabric came from the queue, and the team members quickly reached into their pockets to check their identification documents.
Dojima Yan looked at the captains in the front row.
"I don't need to repeat my public cover identity. I'm an ordinary engineer with a commercial contract, tasked with maintaining the heavy assets of a Japanese company in the desert."
He paused, his expression becoming even more serious.
"Next, the actual operational briefing."
"War is about to break out in the Middle East."
"According to intelligence provided by higher-ups," Dojima Iwao slowed his speech, "the US military is about to deploy a massive force to the battlefield. As the most advanced armed force on this planet, they are about to demonstrate the most cutting-edge three-dimensional warfare model of this era."
He took half a step forward.
"We won't be responsible for the main attack. But you will be deployed deep into the periphery and chaotic areas of the war zone."
"The young lady spent a lot of money to send you in. The real purpose is to let this team personally adapt to this modern three-dimensional warfare mode."
"In this environment, we need to conduct armed rescue of high-value targets, carry out special operations in complex urban ruins, and respond to sudden urban warfare engagements."
Dojima Iwao's gaze swept over the solemn young faces one by one.
"Over the past few years, you've consumed tens of tons of ammunition at underground firing ranges and conducted countless tactical drills. Now, go see the blood on a real battlefield. Give me a real, hands-on training to develop your comprehensive coordination capabilities."
"Once we arrive, the rules remain the same. No one is allowed to touch the equipment in the crates until we reach the designated defensive line."
"In the event of an uncontrollable armed attack, retaliation is permitted. However, everyone must strictly adhere to combat discipline and formation. We prioritize defense and rescue; anyone who disrupts tactical order or pursues without authorization..."
He looked at the formation, his voice cold and hard.
"I will deal with him myself. Do you understand?"
"clear."
A deep, orderly response rang out from under the dome.
Dojima Iwao raised his left hand and glanced at the time on his watch.
"Okay, now. Everyone, please."
"Boarding."
Dojima Iwao turned around and strode towards an SUV parked at the front of the convoy.
The special operations team members quickly turned around, and the formation of hundreds of people silently dispersed.
They are different from regular national armies. They do not fight for national sovereignty, nor do they fight for passion or faith.
What drives them is the high salaries provided by the group, the housing security arranged by the group, the exclusive medical access within the group, and the comprehensive protection for their families by the group.
This is a privately-run armed force driven purely by self-interest. Their personal interests are inextricably linked to the interests of the corporation; fighting for company assets is tantamount to fighting for their own interests.
The formation quickly dispersed into tactical squads of six men each, rushing towards their designated transport trucks. The truck doors opened and slammed shut.
The diesel engines of ten heavy-duty container trucks were started one after another. The convoy, lined up end to end, drove into the rainy night outside.
Two kilometers ahead, the runway indicator lights at Yokota Air Base flashed red and blue in the rain. A C-5 Galaxy heavy military transport plane, its body entirely gray, was parked on the tarmac.
This private army of capital, operating outside of national sovereignty, has now officially stepped into that desert wasteland that will reshape the world order.