The War After Armageddon Page 11

  As they walked back toward the command post, Cavanaugh said, “And you really don’t mind us blowing up that tunnel? It must be a Biblical site, thousands of—”

  “Sir, if I could, I’d destroy every stone that men have ever fought over in His name. He wants us to look Heavenward. And we revel in our shit and call it holy. Speaking of which — have you designated a latrine area yet?”

  SEVEN

  MEGIDDO

  “Shit,” First Lieutenant Tom Kosinski said. Then, with a sense that his mother hovered at his shoulder, he added, “Sorry, Chaplain.”

  The priest didn’t seem to hear any of it. He gazed in the direction of the mound. Although he was staring into dirt and couldn’t see a damned thing from the shell crater.

  Still listening. Hoping. Praying. Expecting a miracle.

  But there wasn’t going to be one. There had been no explosion. That meant McGinley was dead or shot up too badly to get the job done. And McGinley had carried the last satchel charge the engineers had brought with them.

  Suicide mission, anyway. Chances of getting close enough to the hole, dropping off the charge, and getting away were about zero. The engineer major, dead as dogshit after tripping a mine, had made it clear that he’d brought down the good stuff. Which was also the bad stuff.

  “We don’t talk about it much,” the major had briefed, “but these charges were developed for just this kind of target. After the blast itself, they throw off enough gas to kill anything within twenty meters in the open air — or down a hundred-meter tunnel. You don’t want to hang around. The existence of CV-11 is classified, by the way.”

  The combat engineer squad the major had brought along was supposed to do the dirty work. Now the engineers were dead, wounded, or scattered out of Kosinski’s control radius. And that radius kept shrinking.

  Whatever the hell else the Jihadis had in that tunnel, they had some powerful general-purpose jammers. Strong enough to deflect any precision-guided rounds that might still work. And dumb rounds, which the arty boys had dropped in multitudes, just didn’t do the trick. It reminded Kosinski of what he’d read about the Japa — nese dug in on Pacific islands.

  The Jihadis fired a volley of smoke canisters. They were nervous-in-the-service, too. He had to remember that. When the waves of doubt came over him.

  The jammers wiped out everything. His headset was worthless. And only five of his soldiers were within visual range — two of them in the same crater as Kosinski and the chaplain. Which made a nice target.

  So he couldn’t talk. And the smoke meant he couldn’t get a clear look at the mound. McGinley was KIA or WIA with the last charge up in the mess of blasted shrubs, twisted chain-link fence, wire, mines, and corpses.

  It wasn’t like Iwo Jima, Kosinski decided. It was like World War I.

  What now, Lieutenant? He mocked himself with the immemorial question. Now that you’ve got a minefield behind you, the enemy’s got clear fields of fire if you go forward or pull out, your chain of command wanted the mission accomplished hours ago, the light’s failing, and, although there seemed to be fewer of them now, enough Jihadis remained alive to dump the wrath of Allah on anything that moved.

  Artillery rounds shrieked overhead. But the shells were headed elsewhere.

  Okay, okay, Kosinski thought. I can’t talk. But they can’t talk, either. I’ve got the U.S. Army behind me. These bozos are in for Mohammed’s Last Stand, and they know it. The battalion S-2 had briefed them all on suicide units that would never surrender. Roger. But there had to be some damned weakness.

  They didn’t cover this at Benning.

  Okay. They had to work in closer. Try to get to McGinley. Get the satchel charge. Which the engineer had described as almost a mininuke. And get it into the mouth of the damned tunnel.

  I choose Course of Action B, sir.

  You are a no-go at this station.

  The Jihadis launched a pair of rifle grenades in Kosinski’s general direction. Maybe to check if any Americans were still alive. The smoke from the grenades immediately began to drift off. But the light was going. And with all the flashes on every side, the night-vision gear wouldn’t be worth much.

  What now, Lieutenant?

  Forward, sir.

  Kosinski motioned to Staff Sergeant Wasserman. You. And Winchell. Move out. Left. Then he signaled to Sergeant Baker, Martinez, and Liu. Covering fire, then move. Classic fire and maneuver. Bounding overwatch. Except this wasn’t an exercise with dummy rounds in the Georgia clay.

  Let’s go. Follow me.

  “Father. You stay here. You’ve done your part.”

  The priest shook his head. He took off at a run before Kosinski could get over the lip of the crater.

  Okay, follow the priest.

  The Jihadis didn’t open up immediately. The smoke grenades might have obscured the tunnel’s defenses, but now the last wisps obscured the Americans.

  Were the J’s low on ammo?

  No. They’d have plenty in there. Stacked up.

  Run. Run.

  Kosinski caught up with the chaplain and yanked him into another crater. Just as interlocking fires from two machine guns swept the ground at thigh level.

  Kosinski couldn’t see any of his soldiers now. He wondered if any had obeyed his order to move out. Past a certain point, he realized, a lieutenant’s authority reached its limit. The platoon — what remained of it — had probably passed it.

  Machine-gun rounds ripped overhead. You could feel the air getting out of their way.

  Couldn’t blame his soldiers much if they were still hunkered down. They’d followed him a damned long way. Maneuvering up to approach this Megiddo lump of dirt from the north, they’d hit the first belt of mines. Screams, and men squirming. Lost the weak ones right there, the newbies. Koskinski had watched the engineer major leap into the air like a super-hero. Except that his legs separated from his torso and flew off in their own eccentric directions. For all the noise of battle, he’d heard the thud when the major came back to earth. Anyway, he thought he’d heard it.

  Dark coming. Not good news. Mission unaccomplished.

  The machine-gun fire ceased. For the moment.

  Kosinski looked around in desperation. And found only the priest.

  Okay. Game over. Time to pay up. Time to at least look like a leader.

  Course of Action C, sir?

  It was up to him now. His turn. Go in and find McGinley. And the charge. Give it to the bastards.

  Or.

  No “or.”

  Just give it to the bastards.

  He already saw himself running forward, saw it all play out. It did not end well.

  The priest had read his mind. He laid a staying hand on the lieutenant, forcing Kosinski back down as he began to rise. Father Powers inched close, until their uniforms met and the warmth beneath their sleeves connected. So human it made Kosinski wince. With the noise and stink of war roiling around them. In the loneliest place on earth.

  “Listen to me,” the priest shouted. Or it seemed like a shout. “I’ve been there. I know where the tunnel starts.”

  Their eyes met in the dying light. And Kosinski saw something in the other man’s eyes that he never found a word for. Maybe his mom was right and priests knew secrets.

  “Stay here,” the chaplain commanded. “I’ll handle it.”

  Kosinski felt as though a spell had been cast, as though the priest’s authority superseded that of generals. Later, he sometimes asked himself if he’d just been a coward. But even in his most cynical moments, he knew there was more to it than that.

  The priest leapt into the dusk, running forward. Alone.

  The machine guns opened up again. Kosinski didn’t dare raise his head to look. No screams. But heavy-caliber machine guns didn’t leave you much to scream with.

  One eternity passed, and another began.

  Kosinski readied himself. To follow in the priest’s footsteps. Suddenly emboldened, telling himself, “What the hell, I’m a bache
lor. What does it matter?”

  He refused to think further, to contemplate anything but the mission.

  Go.

  Just as he was about to climb from the crater, the heavens roared, and the earth shook, and darkness covered the land.

  NAZARETH

  Nasr waited far longer than the thirty minutes he’d granted himself before moving out to make his transmission. After reaching the tiny hole he’d rented and mortifying the landlord through whose rooms he had to pass, he’d fallen into unconsciousness. As soon as he lowered his body onto the mattress. When he woke again, after scorching dreams, the light was going, and it took him several minutes to master reality.

  As the shock of the beating wore off, the pain worsened. Yet, the pain itself had an opiate quality on another level, lulling him into a trance he had to resist with his remaining strength.

  He decided to wait until full dark to leave again and retrieve the burst transmitter. In the meantime, he constructed his message. Reaching for effective words and eco nom ical formulations he could punch in quickly.

  The world seemed about as clear as muddy water. And not just because of the enveloping night.

  What could he say that would make sense? When things didn’t make sense?

  Brevity, he cautioned himself. Short sentences. Keep it simple, stupid. Just the bones.

  At last, he thought he had it. He hoped he would remember it all, since he couldn’t write it down:

  Minimum 23 busloads internally displaced persons today. Syrian, Lebanese and possibly Iraqi or Gulf Arab. Educated. Many middle-aged. Purpose of transfers unclear. City overcrowded. Local foodstocks low. Heavy police presence, but few troops and no visible defenses within city. Believe have been compromised. Apparent Jihadi wish that I transmit possible last message. Assess Jihadis want us to know about refugees. No explanation.

  Count to remember. Twelve sentence fragments. How many clauses? Too hard. Twelve fragments. Okay, repeat. And repeat again.

  He wanted to put on clean clothes but found it too difficult to get the bloody rags off his body. He worried that the pain was beating him down, defeating him. Now and then, he coughed up more blood. But what did it matter? If they were going to kill him?

  He tried to reason against his conclusion. Maybe they wanted him to continue transmitting? Maybe they really hadn’t pegged him at all?

  No. They knew.

  Twelve fragments. What’s number four, stud? Many middle-aged.

  You’ll never be middle-aged. And you haven’t even been married and divorced once. To qualify for full membership in the Special Forces, you had to have at least two marriages in your past and an estranged wife with papers on you.

  None of that was going to happen now. Should’ve married some allotment-hunter from Fayetteville or Columbus. Just to check the block. While waiting for Daddy’s little trust-fund baby. Found wandering the streets of Chapel Hill.

  Too late now, tiger. Jody’s got your girl and gone.

  The poetry of it all. He snickered at himself and coughed up more blood.

  Ain’t no use in lookin’ back, Jody’s got your Cadillac.

  He knew that he shouldn’t think about death. You had to focus on the mission. But it was hard.

  Nasr dragged himself back through his landlord’s rooms, where no living thing was in evidence. All of them hiding. From him. Nasr figured the old bugger was going to lock the door the minute he made the street.

  Dad, I’m sorry. I screwed this up. Keep Mom straight, okay?

  “Died doing his duty.” What a joke. They would’ve been just as happy to put his family in one of the Providential Communities. Call them whatever they wanted to, they were camps. Concentration camps. In the United States of America.

  Well, it wasn’t the first time. And his family was still safe in Sacramento. Maudlin for an instant, he imagined his father waving a medal in the face of some Jesus-was-really-a-white-American bureaucrat.

  Sorry, Dad.

  Nasr lugged his body through the streets. There were no lights now. Blackout conditions. Only the stars and a moon hidden by buildings, and the lightning flashes of shell bursts beyond the ridges. His eyes were swollen almost shut, worse than they’d been before he’d gone unconscious among the bedbugs. An exasperated girl-friend had once told him he was blind. Well, now he just about was.

  Tina. Oh, yes. So demure in public.

  Tina, Tina. Nicest bad girl I ever met. Carnivorous.

  He smiled at himself. Until his lips, gums, and teeth ached. Which didn’t take long.

  He’d actually been worried about bedbugs in his room. The truth, which Nasr hid from his comrades, was that he was a clean-freak. Concerned with getting the bedbugs out of his clothing after he exfiltrated. What a joke. Glad to share many more nights with all the little guests in his bed, if only.

  The bedbugs would’ve loved Tina.

  For a long moment, he wasn’t even sure he was at the right place. But it smelled right. Even with his nose smashed up. The local piss lane. He limped into the corridor, the ammonia smell searing his nostrils. Doing the best he could to check that he was alone. Aware that he was incapable of judging whether he’d been followed.

  Nasr reached down into a crumbling foundation and jimmied out a brick with his good hand. Wondering if he’d be able to work the stylus on the keypad.

  He meant to bend over to hide the tiny glow of the device but found himself on his knees. With the dizziness on him again.

  Twelve fragmentary sentences. Begin.

  In the beginning was the Word…

  And the word was: Minimum.

  Minimum 23 busloads…

  Even though he’d reasoned that they wanted him to transmit, he expected to feel a hand upon him. Or a club. To hear footsteps. Anything. Except being left alone to do his work.

  He was left alone. He fired the burst transmission, waited, then sent it again. Hoping it would get through.

  He didn’t want it all to be a waste.

  From sheer discipline, he hid the transmitter again. Because that was how soldiers did things. Right to the end.

  And he turned back down the stinking corridor, waiting to die.

  Instead of being murdered, Nasr made it back to the house where the lovely bedbugs awaited him. He found the front door open and the landlord trying frantically to find any working channel on an uncooperative television.

  Nasr muttered, “Salaam Aleikum,” and, still expecting to die, went to sleep.

  HEADQUARTERS, III (US) CORPS, MT. CARMEL RIDGES

  “The SeaBees say they can do it, sir,” Colonel McCoy, the corps logistician said. “As soon as the grungies clear the ridges east of the Haifa Gap. They tell me they can lay double flexi-pipe into the Jezreel in twenty-four hours and start pumping. Service with a smile.”

  “All right, Real-Deal,” Harris said. He’d stepped outside of the deserted houses commandeered as the corps’ forward command post. Thirsty for fresh air.

  The night stank of war.

  Harris watched the silhouettes of ammo carriers pass along the road. “All right. But I don’t want any of our soldiers playing chicken with gamma rays. Or sailors, either. No short cuts on the protective gear while they’re on the ground in Haifa. And rigid adherence to dwell times.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And remember what I told you last night. I need you. I don’t want you turning into a night-light on two hind legs. Stay out of there.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And tell the SeaBees good work.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll tell them. As soon as the POL starts flowing.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Water. The doc and I are tight on this, sir. We’ll get the water down to the troops. But you’ve got to hammer ’em: no drinking the local stuff. I mean, no bottled water from Ahmed’s refrigerator. It’s going to be tempting, if they run into something halfway cold. But the doc’s a hard-ass about this — he’s worried about radiation, not the runs.”

&nbs
p; “Got it. But you’ve got to get that water out there. It’s push, not pull, Real-Deal. I don’t want full pallets sitting at division or brigade.”

  “I’ll put the fear of God into all the Fours, sir.”

  Harris grimaced, although his G-4 couldn’t see the expression in the darkness. “We’ve all had enough ‘fear of God,’ Sean. Just put the fear of Real-Deal McCoy into them, all right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You getting any sleep?”

  Before the logistician could answer, a helmeted figure loomed from the shadows. The parade-ground posture, even under the weight of body armor, was unmistakable.

  “Over here, Scottie.”

  The 1st Infantry Division’s commander pivoted as if he were still a cadet captain at West Point.

  The G-4 saluted, a dark bird-swoop, and stepped away.

  “Evening, sir.”

  “What’s up, Scottie? I thought you’d be down in your CP harassing your staff and complicating the planning process.”

  Major General Walter Robert Burns Scott took off his helmet and ran his palm over his hair. By the light of day, it was as red as the field of Bannockburn. Now he was a shadow, paler where flesh caught starlight.

  “That’s what I need to speak to you about, sir.”

  “Talk to me.”

  “Sir… The fact is that I don’t have the guts to make a decision. Without running it by you.”

  “Doesn’t sound like the leash-snapper we all know and love. Talk to me.”

  “My deputy electronic-warfare officer came up with something. Sir, I need you to hear me out before you decide I’m crazy.”