OPERATION WRATH OF GOD, Chapter 5

Copyright © 2026 Robert Ensor

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.First published February 2026.The author’s moral rights have been asserted.

All Bible quotations, unless otherwise stated or referenced, are taken from the online World English Bible (WEB), which is in the public domain. It is available at the following link: https://ebible.org/eng-web/index.htm. Sometimes I paraphrase the Bible and when I do so, I reference the chapter and verse. Direct quotations from the WEB are indicated by quotation marks. English language Bibles are translated from Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. I am no linguist, and I don’t know any linguists, so I have had to rely on others’ translations and romanizations of the Hebrew and Greek texts. Occasionally, I have examined the original Hebrew and Greek of the Bible, zeroing in on key words where the received English translation is debatable or misses the full meaning of the original. To clarify, the WEB refers to the Antichrist, the beasts, and the False Prophet, but makes no reference to any ‘Khan’ or ‘Lavani’, which are names for the Antichrist and the False Prophet given for the purposes of this book.

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor or a therapist and nothing in this book should be considered medical advice. Nor should it be considered a substitute for diagnoses, prescriptions and treatments from qualified doctors. If you have symptoms, I recommend that you see a doctor to rule out anything serious and get proper care.

Chapter 5: Operation Wrath

That was the codename The Pentagon had chosen for this mission. Staff Sergeant Azim Habib had scoffed when he first heard it in the briefing room at Virginia Beach. They were sat on comfortable swivel chairs around a pinewood table, staring at TV screens showing images from the laptop on the desk. To the left of the screens was a whiteboard with a CIA map of Iraq. Lieutenant Commander Brent Mastick was a bearded wonder in his late forties, recently retired from combat operations. Beside him stood Section Chief Layla Dalila of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), a smartly dressed 42-year-old Lebanese Brit, the former station head in Beirut, and MI6’s top expert on the Middle East.

‘What can I say? The Pentagon was feeling biblical,’ said Mastick.

‘It’s better than Desert Storm,’ said Amir. ‘Not the most secure codename I’ve ever heard, though. If the enemy gets wind of it, it won’t take them two guesses to figure out what we’re up to. What with Khan being the Antichrist and all, the one God directs his wrath against above all others in the Bible.’

‘Is that so?’ asked Azim. As a Muslim, he had not taken much of an interest in the Bible.

‘One meaning of God’s wrath in the Bible is the wrath of Jesus when he returns, directed at the Antichrist and his followers. That’s why wrath is associated with “the Day of the Lord”[i] which in a sense is just that: a day.’

‘I thought you Christians believe we are in the Day of the Lord. That it is this crazy time we are living in. At least, that’s what I heard online.’

‘Some Christians believe the Day of the Lord, and God’s wrath, only refer to the seven-year tribulation period that we are currently in; others believe it’s the tribulation and the millennium. But it is sometimes described as a day of darkness and cloud, a day when the last trumpet is blown by an angel.[ii] Obviously, a trumpet will not sound for several years, and the skies haven’t been gloomy for years on end. That’s why I believe God’s wrath and the Day of the Lord often means a 24-hour day.’

‘Huh. We expect Jesus to return, too, you know. In Damascus.’

‘Well, as a Christian, I’m looking to Edom. Present-day Jordan.’

‘Edom? That is a wasteland. Why would Isa want to return there?’

‘To save the remnant – the Israeli refugees who are there now, in fulfilment of the old covenants. The promises Yahweh made to Abraham,[iii] to Isaac,[iv] to Jacob[v] and to David,[vi] and the promise he made through Moses to regather Israel.[vii] The Bible and world history are mainly about the steps God takes to fulfil the promises he made thousands of years ago. That is how seriously God takes his word. In a way, because God’s law and commandments are covenantal, all morality is based on keeping promises.’

‘Yes, we believe that some People of the Book will be saved in the Last Day, but I do not know about Edom. I do know that this Khan is Dajjal, the False Messiah. He is not Allah: he cannot be Allah!’ Azim said, heatedly.

‘Well, we can agree on that much,’ conceded Amir.

‘Gentlemen, when you are quite done with your little theological debate, we have a briefing to give and a mission to plan,’ said Lieutenant Commander Mastick. DEVGRU operators were heavily involved in mission planning.

The US Navy’s Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU), better known as SEAL TEAM SIX, were the elite Tier 1 force founded by Richard Marcinko for high-stakes, politically sensitive counter terrorism operations. Since then, their remit had expanded to all kinds of special operations, including counterproliferation (Hillier’s team was stood down from sabotaging the joint Iranian-Iraqi nuclear program), direct action, counter-narcotics, hostage rescue, reconnaissance and developing new tactics and equipment for the Navy. DEVGRU were the best of the best, selected exclusively from the Navy SEALS (SEa Air and Land teams), who were themselves special forces operators.

Hillier had a mop of unruly dark brown hair and a thick beard. The relaxed grooming standards of the Navy SEALS suited him down to the ground. He had been anxious to get away from the relentless shaving, bed-making and cramped ship-life of the regular Navy and had swiftly applied for BUDS (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training). Amir’s American father worked in the oil industry, managing a few rigs before a posting to Kuwait. His mother was half Kuwaiti and had taught Amir passable Arabic. The family had moved to the States when Hillier was seven.

The obvious unfolding of Bible prophecy in recent years had been a wake-up call for Amir, prompting him to convert to Christianity, after years as an agnostic. His Muslim mother wasn’t too happy about it, and nor were his friends, but the terror Amir had felt when the dark riders had marauded through the streets of Virginia Beach with their scimitars and spears, killing people to the left and right of him, was far greater than anything he had ever felt on the battlefield. Amir did not really fear those who can kill the body, but he did fear for his very soul on that day. It had pushed him to take the advice of ‘Tadpole’, his diminutive Texan frogman buddy, and seek refuge in Christ.

Azim was an Iraqi Interpreter for the Brits during the Second Gulf War. He was a short, lean man with a rugged, gnarled face covered in scars. He kept his salt and pepper beard long for surveillance work in Afghanistan’s tribal badlands; it helped him to blend in. Azim, his wife and children had been allowed to immigrate to the UK. He had continued his work with the British Army, eventually passing SAS selection and training.

‘This’ll be a covert operation, JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) will be in operational command, with the involvement of UKSF,’ said Mastick.

‘So Lieutenant Amir Hillier will be your Commanding Officer for this mission,’ said Dalilah. As always, the Americans wanted to take the lead.

Azim grunted his reluctant assent.

‘The idea is simple. Two multilingual spec ops guys of Middle Eastern extraction – that’ll be you – will go undercover disguised as Iraqi soldiers, use your uniforms to get close to the tyrant Khan, and kill him from within his own capital, Babylon,’ explained Mastick.

Azim swallowed, uneasily.

‘The Olive Branch Alliance is so dependent on Khan’s cult of personality that once he is removed from the picture, chaos will ensue. Lavani, the Iranians, the Syrians and the Libyans will all strive to fill the power vacuum. War is sure to follow. But war is better than this monster’s olive branch.’

‘You don’t need to convince me this beast needs putting down. But where’s everyone else?’ said Amir.

‘You are to be the only two operators on the ground.’

The two men looked at each other askance.

‘Hold up Mastick. If I’m risking my neck, and a lot more besides, I want my team with me. Not some guy I never met. No offence,’ Amir added, as an afterthought.

‘None taken. I feel the same way,’ said Azim, frostily.

‘Tough. The cake eaters believe that one operator from the US and one from the UK will present a more united front, should you be captured, or your presence discovered,’ said Mastick, oblivious to the fact he was now a cake eater himself.

‘The Pentagon would have liked to include a German KSM frogman, too’ – Mastick raised his eyebrows – ‘but there was a fear of leaks if the circle was too wide, and given the need for stealth, a two-man sniper team is actually preferable to the standard platoon or even a four-man fireteam. So you’d better get familiar. You have two weeks to train together.’

Amir and Azim looked at each other uneasily.

The two operators were not only divided by religion, but background, too. Hillier grew up in a middle-class American household, whereas Azim had been brought up poor in Iraq. Hillier thought of himself as being more western than Middle Eastern, while Azim had only recently been naturalised as a UK citizen.

‘Why Iraqi Army? Why not the Sacred Guard?’ asked Azim.

‘The Sacred Guard would be too risky. They’re a tight-knit cadre, subject to intense vetting and security checks. The army is larger and easier to infiltrate. There are lots of army units around Babylon, since Khan started using them to hunt “traitors” after the war ended. The presence of a couple of extra soldiers shouldn’t raise too many eyebrows,’ said Dalila. ‘And you will obviously be using Iraqi Army equipment. The Dragunov with which you will kill Khan is more common among the army than among the Sacred Guard,’ Layla said, looking at Amir.

Amir nodded. He was familiar with the Dragunov (SVD), a Russian-made semi-automatic sniper rifle.

‘Needless to say, this is a totally deniable operation,’ said Mastick. ‘The best case scenario is that it will be chalked up to the Iraqi domestic resistance. Which is why you are to bring some spray paint and leave their graffiti tag at the crime scene.’

‘The Iraqi resistance also use the Dragunov,’ observed Azim.

Mastick nodded.

‘The US and UK governments do not want to start a nuclear war with Malik Khan, whose intercontinental ballistic missiles could reach both our countries and our allies. However, the politicians are sick of his interference in our domestic affairs, via his many followers over here,’ said Miss Dalila.

Video footage of people with marks on their hands and foreheads appeared onscreen, clashing with riot police. These clips were interspersed with footage from Khan’s rallies, where his followers bowed down and worshipped him.

‘As you may know, Khan has tried to use these followers to blackmail western powers into non-intervention and lifting sanctions. Through back channels, Khan has threatened to make his minions attack western governments en masse. To effectively turn them into an army of terrorists. So far only a minority of Khanites are active terrorists, but most attend the protests, and many have participated in riots. Khan has implied that he has the ability to flip a switch and turn anyone with the mark into a kamikaze or a saboteur via the mind control properties of his AI-nanobot implant, which have been inserted into the brains and bloodstreams of his followers. Our boffins reverse engineered the nanomachines and confirmed Khan had the power to do so. Perhaps even more disturbingly, they also found that Khan could give anyone or everyone with the mark a fatal heart attack by using nanobot clusters to block arteries. This would be a totally deniable kill, as those same nanobots could be ordered to disperse after the assassination. The mark is not just a token of worship: it is a bioweapon. Khan has forced the ten other leaders of his alliance to publicly take the mark – and now he has them on the other end of his kill switch.’

Amir let out a low whistle. ‘Boy am I glad I didn’t get that implant.’

‘Indeed,’ said Miss Dalilah. ‘It goes without saying that no one with the implant has been notified of this mission – which was not easy. 37% of the UK population and 34% of Americans have taken the Security ID.’

‘By which you mean, the mark of the beast,’ corrected Amir.

‘You may call it that,’ Layla said, in a way that implied she wouldn’t.

‘The consequences of a mass casualty event on our economies, which are both just getting back on their feet after the devastating disasters of a few years ago, would be dire. So any operations in the Olive Branch Alliance must be strictly deniable, as they were during the USSR in the Cold War. Even so, Khan’s intelligence operatives and the Iranians are not naïve. If you are caught, you will almost certainly be tortured and killed by Khan’s Sacred Guard, and the reprisals against the US and UK would likely be severe.’

Miss Dalila stared at them, impressing upon them the gravity of the situation.

Neither operator said anything.

‘What about communications?’

‘You will be given a civilian SATCOM radio, but you are explicitly ordered to refrain from using it to contact “Havoc” – the joint SAS/DEVGRU operational HQ in Saudi Arabia – except in emergencies, because of the risk of interception, and the need for plausible deniability. Khan’s regime is very tech savvy, his INI is good at interception, and encrypted communications could be hacked by his Artificial Intelligence. Even if decryption takes months or years, JSOC does not want this operation to ever be discovered, and the mere presence of advanced encryption on satellite communications would suggest NATO operational involvement,’ explained Mastick.

‘So we’re in the dark.’

‘I don’t like it anymore than you, but that’s the way it is,’ said Mastick.

‘When it comes to insertion, what are we thinking? HAHO?’ said Azim.

HAHO stood for High Altitude, High Opening. It was a form of parachute insertion commonly used by special operators for its relatively low risk of detection. The high opening of the parachute canopy enabled operators to travel up to 40 miles in the air, so that aircraft could remain undetected well outside of enemy airspace.

Mastick nodded. ‘Khan has sophisticated radar and satellite systems, and the skies of Iraq are swarming with drones. However, there are few drones in the southern Iraqi desert where you will be landing. And with the Air Force’s MC130J Commando II, you will be jumping from 35,000 feet, well inside Saudi airspace, not far from established commercial flight corridors to Dubai, enabling us to hide from Iraqi radar among the passenger planes.’

‘What about sneaking over the border from Saudi Arabia on foot?’ asked Amir.

Dalila pushed another button on the laptop, and a photo of a high double layered fence, watchtowers and dog patrols appeared on screen.

‘The Saudi-Iraq border is heavily fortified on both sides. There are multiple layers of barbed wire fencing, a ditched barrier wall, regular watchtowers, automated machine gun emplacements and armed drone patrols up and down the entire border, with orders to shoot unauthorised personnel on sight with extreme prejudice,’ said Dalila.

Naturally, the Saudis could not be part of any alliance featuring Iran due to the longstanding rivalry between the two regional powers, and so they were opposed to Khan’s empire. That is why they had permitted the US Navy and the CIA to operate out of their country. Saudi Arabia’s hostility to Khan was the only thing keeping Jordan outside of his grasp.

Mastick continued: ‘Once you have landed, you are to travel 15 klicks on foot to meet a contact, Abu Marani, who will give you a jeep that you will use to journey to Babylon. The story is that you have been ordered away from your duties on the Saudi border in advance of Khan’s upcoming speech in Babylon. Your army Humvee broke down in the desert and you requisitioned a civilian vehicle. In Babylon, you are to meet another resistance contact, Nadir Awan, who has secured an abandoned office building as an observation post from which you will be able to assassinate Khan during his upcoming speech. The speech is scheduled for midnight the night after your insertion and will be delivered from the pinnacle of his tower, Etemananki.’

The original Etemananki was built around the second millennium BC and was enlarged by Nebuchadnezzar II in the 500’s BC. A photo of the reconstruction appeared onscreen: it was a dusty 91-metre-tall ziggurat with seven stages, each smaller than the last. Steps connected the levels. The tower was made of bitumen and mudbrick, like the original, and there were occasional splashes of blue paint on some of the crenellations and the rooftop shrine. The original structure was called ‘the mountain’ by contemporaries, and its seven stages were the seven mountains of Revelation’s (17:9) beast. The reconstruction of Babylon was the beast healing from a ‘fatal wound’ (Revelation 13:12).

The tower loomed over the rest of the city, a strikingly incongruous ancient pagan monument amidst a modern metropolis. At the top of Etemananki, human sacrifices were performed. The sacrifices were made to a robotic statue of Khan, like the one that was left in the temple, the very abomination of desolation itself.

‘A speech at midnight?’ asked Azim.

‘Khan is a night owl, apparently.’

‘And a weirdo.’

‘What’s the range from the observation post?’ Amir asked.

‘1,400 metres,’ Mastick said. The visual changed to a bird’s eye view of Babylon, and a red dotted line was drawn from the office building to Etemananki.

Amir nodded. It wouldn’t be easy, but he could make that shot with the Dragunov.

Then a photo of Marani appeared onscreen, alongside a basic bio. He was 5”8 and 52 years old, Azim noted.

‘The first rendezvous point with Marani is at his house in the wilderness. He’s a shepherd. The cities are heavily patrolled and watched, but pockets of resistance remain in the countryside.’

‘As you know, armed robots have been integrated into Iraqi Army patrols and checkpoints,’ said Dalila.

‘You mean the beastbots,’ Amir said.

An image of a beastbot appeared on the TV. The robot was made in the likeness of Khan, with his crowned black shawl and cloak, and that baleful gaze, but it had a ten-inch machine gun barrel mounted on the chest.

Looking at the screen, Azim tensed up.

‘The machine guns are belt fed with 200 rounds of ammo. The bots have no more ammunition on them. Even unarmed, the robots are able to engage in hand to hand combat with superhuman strength, though they aren’t very nimble, to say the least.’

‘The robots are programmed to kill all so-called apostates, and anyone without the Security ID,’ said Layla Dalila.

The term Khan used for someone who didn’t worship him was appropriated from Christianity: apostate.

‘Whether one worships Khan or not is determined by the robot. The bot’s RFID reader, machine vision and natural language processing check for the mark, and for the movements and language of Khan-worship (bowing from the waist and saying that Khan is the Messiah).

So we’ve arranged for you to be given fake marks – a forged tattoo and a RFID chip, without any nanomachine mind control – designed by the CIA’s Science and Technology Directorate to fool the drones’ machine vision. With these in your hands, when the bots scan you, you should appear to have the Security ID.’

At that moment, two white-coated scientists entered the room, including a lean, balding chap with spectacles and a worrying glint in his eye. He presented Hillier and Azim with consent forms. ‘Sign here, please.’

The operators looked to Mastick, who nodded.

‘Come on boys, take your shots.’

The two men sighed and complied. They were used to getting shots, given the various exotic deployments they’d had over the years. Though both were religious, they figured God would understand the difference between a fake mark taken to kill the false Messiah and a real one taken to honour him.

Then the mad scientist type promptly took out a little injector and stabbed it into Amir’s right hand. His friend, a bespectacled girl who looked like she hadn’t seen the sun in years, did the same to Azim, who glared at her and muttered curses in Arabic.

‘They’re quite harmless – provided they work. Which is why we’ve arranged for a quick test,’ said the girl.

‘Malik, come in,’ said the balding scientist.

The door to the briefing room swung open, and a seven-foot-tall version of Malik Khan stepped into the room. He was dressed in his ominous black robe, his eyes barely visible beneath the hood, a grim smirk playing on his psychopathic face. His torso was wrapped with ammo belts, and a ten-inch gun barrel jutted from his chest.

 Read the next chapter here: https://www.robertensor.com/post/operation-wrath-of-god-the-rapture-the-second-coming-the-campaign-of-armageddon-and-the-kingdom-o-6

[i] Zephaniah 1:15.

[ii] Zephaniah 1:15–16; Matthew 24:31; 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17.

[iii] Genesis 15:18–21.

[iv] Genesis 26:2–4

[v] Genesis 28:14.

[vi] 2 Samuel 7.

[vii] Deuteronomy 30:1–4.