Chapter 6: The Gang of Seven

Permission to use "The Magnificent Seven" as teaching material arrived shortly after war openly broke out on Dar-al-Salam. The copyright owner was Mirisch-Alpha and the AI handled all the legal stuff. My learning package included three showings—for the Arab Dagger project, for an upcoming Command and Staff presentation for Central Command, and one session for the sponsor-grade personnel on our station—or was it a starship? My office is the Mushroom Shack—I'm kept in the dark and force-fed--

GENERAL QUARTERS! GENERAL QUARTERS!

Fortunately the AI can multi-task. Everything was ready. I reported to my battle station—the combat information center. I could have been either the main bridge or auxiliary control, but I was put in a room by myself where I could observe the action. Despite my status as a mushroom, I had been told by Colonel Popov that if I felt it necessary I was to assume command. My edition of "yes sir two bags full sir" was "I shall endeavor to be worthy of your confidence, Captain." Colonel Popov was a ship's captain when the station was in motion. Since we were temporarily an operations base for missions to Earth, we were a station. The command structure was convoluted and only AI or bureaucrats understood it—my guess was that the confusion was deliberate guerrilla warfare to keep some factions in check. Or perhaps I've been hanging out in the baboon laboratory too many hours...

The general quarters call was resolved in a few hours. A ship had emerged from hyperspace and had failed to immediately communicate the correct recognition signals. Expect that to happen frequently in the near future. The ship was identified as friendly—from my Combat Information Center (CIC) I ran the school as normal, with Svetlana beside me. Svetlana was a Siberian tiger I had acquired—an anti-social female, but she seemed to like me. Didn't like baboons at all. I don't blame her—baboon politics is too human!

But I had a class to teach and I was supposed to be in CIC. Holographic avatar to the rescue! I could be in two places at one time. The Arab Dagger AI, Ricardo, ran my avatar to perfection, permitting life-like interaction. Humans had been using simulated interaction between humans and machines for more than two thousand years—check the artifacts. My avatar ran the presentation of "The Magnificent Seven" and then guided a discussion of the key points.

In CIC I doffed my space suit. Still hadn't gotten that self-cleaning feature installed, but if you have an itch there is an app that will scratch it for you. Lilith and the AI called Ramses took control of that patent—I find that I'm rather indifferent to credit and to wealth. As long as I can provide for my family and complete my missions, I don't care about money or fame. Maybe it's a result of life in the shadows. We had secured from General Quarters after the mystery ship with the malfunctioning Identification, Friend or Foe had been identified and appropriate repair and hospital ships dispatched. Could have been another Sa'arm scout ship.

My next class would take place through the sleep learners. As the students filtered out to their quarters, I made my way to my quarters. There General Mubarak and Soloman were waiting for me.

"You are putting the students through an exercise," General Mubarak stated. "We want to go along."

"This exercise divides the class in four groups," I said. "Twenty four students. Seven warriors. They are going to dream through a version of the Magnificent Seven more in tune with their culture. The western was based on the Seven Samurai, a Japanese movie about feudal Japan."

The exercise was simple. I had planned to "fill out" the roster of seven warriors by re-using the students. Not every student would be one of the warriors. In each adventure I played the village leadership who had requested protection from marauding bandits. I had help—several of the women in the station were playing villagers. In my experience most people get bored hearing the details on choreography, cast, crew and set design—I find infrastructure fascinating.

General Mubarak would play two roles and Soloman wanted to play the village spiritual leader. That left some roles left over.

For brevity, I'll only cover one of the General Mubarak adventures. I'll try to explain it from a Western viewpoint. The Seven Samurai translated well into a Western but the original was about as Japanese as you can get! Folk tales don't always survive translation. General Mubarak reprized the role of Chris, the leader of a group of gunmen. In the simulation Mubarak could shoot a handgun, his prized CZ-75 much better than I could shoot a pistol. He also carried a sword and a CZ-58 assault rifle—the General liked Czech machinery. Why a sword in a "western?" Why not?

The village in the dream world created by the sleep learner resembled the Pakistan border region where Mubarak grew up—it was his village. The bandits were forcing the village to grow opium—a cause that all of Mubarak's professional warriors could hate. Of course, the bad guys were raping the women and children—it's par for the course when you're a bad guy. The dreaming good guys got to hate, righteously hate. And they had to fight smart because they were out-numbered five to one.

The first task was to separate the villagers from the bandits. That was difficult but not impossible because only five of the bad guys were on guard duty. A pair patrolled inside the village. One was at the north end of the village and one was at the east end. The last guard watched the bandit motor pool and heavy weapons. It was simple to find the two perimeter guards and Mubarak assigned two men to each one. That left three men to infiltrate the village until after the perimeter had been neutralized—Mubarak and his two were to seize control of the motor pool and heavy weapons. And this had to be done in silence, without alerting the roving patrol. Most of the perceived threat was from the village—isolated villages didn't have much hope of a rescue in that area.

The rest of the gang was scattered among the population enjoying the pleasures of the flesh. Peeling away those awake was just the first step. Of course, the guard on the north was snoozing and so was the motor pool watch—it happens. Just try staying awake at night! The two outside guards were eliminated quickly and quietly. The motor pool guard never woke up from his nap. The two rovers were smoking and chatting as they wandered through the locked-down village, making enough noise so that Mubarak was able to walk up behind them undetected and remove their heads with two quick sword strokes.

With the help of the village elder, most of the village was taken out of the battle zone. That left only three girls and a boy in the quarters used by the bandits. Mubarak had to put three of his men on one of the buildings, the one holding most of the men, and then he led three others into the bandit chief's lair where the bandit leader and his lieutenants were slumbering.

"When we begin shooting, throw grenades inside and then kill anybody who tries to get out," Mubarak whispered to the people covering the 27 inside one building.

The infiltration into the bandit chief's quarters took only a moment—the door caved in part of the wall when Mubarak kicked in the door. The door was basically just two sheets of steel stapled to a frame of 1 by 2 boards. The frame was 2 by 4 lumber set in the mud brick wall. When Mubarak kicked the door in, it made an awful racket that brought two men to their feet in the front room—Mubarak dispatched them both with head shots as he ran into the front room past two naked and screaming girls. The next rooms were closed off with curtains, and a burst of automatic fire came from behind one curtain. Mubarak dove and rolled and came up firing at the shadowy figure behind the assault rifle.

Outside, muffled grenade explosions marked the end of the rest of the gang. A few gun shots as Mubarak's boys finished off the surviving bandits and then silence. Mubarak quickly found some papers indicating that the gang was harvesting poppies using the villagers. In three days the bandits would convoy the harvest to a pick-up point, which is why there were so many gunmen in the village—the three hundred or so villagers were otherwise easy to watch.

Next came an event that was so Pakistani—the rape victims were put to death by the village. Understand that the village wasn't in the United States. It was a different culture, a different world. I had to remind myself of two things: this was a simulation, and the advice of T. E. Lawrence that they had to do it their way. Didn't help much even though no real victims were harmed during the simulation. Don't ask me about CAP scores for these people. Fortunately, I wasn't the testing authority. The simulation incident brought up another problem for US forces intervening in foreign nations—American morality was not wanted.

Mubarak organized the village for self-protection, distributing the arms carried by the 35 dead bandits and training the villagers in their use. There had been a few old Enfield and Mosin-Nagant rifles in the village, and the first person the bandits had murdered was the village elder, taking his Mauser pistol. Two days training wasn't really enough, but it would have to do. Two days training and a slew of modern weapons left the village better prepared than before.

A day ahead of the deadline Mubarak and his men departed the village for the pick up point, taking some of the heavy weapons. His goal was setting up an ambush for the rest of the gang. It was a job for professionals and the enemy was almost five hundred strong—outnumbering Mubarak by around seventy to one. Direct action—kill the leader of the larger gang and send the demoralized remnants packing, destroy the opium crop, let them starve!

Of course, there were too many of them and not enough of Mubarak's gang. There was a one-on-one sword fight between Mubarak and the bandit king and Mubarak won. Machine gun fire, explosions, lots of blood. Eventually Mubarak was making his last stand, dead enemy carpeting the ground around him. He died in a blaze of gunfire and explosions.

Never mind what I would have done in that situation—General Mubarak was the product of different traditions. Only in America is living forever a goal. Most other places still have the tradition of a magnificent death. Mubarak had his magnificent death--