The War After Armageddon Read online

  “Yes, sir. She knows. Where are you hit?”

  “My legs. I can’t find my legs. Where are my legs?”

  Garcia felt down the torso, trying to figure out the body’s posture in the shadows. There was blood. Plenty of it. Sticky. Something stank. But he could feel both the lieutenant’s legs still joined to the hip.

  Warily, he felt down the limbs. Feeling uphill, with the lieutenant’s head pointed down into the draw.

  Both legs were perfectly intact. Right down to the combat boots. The bones didn’t even feel broken.

  “Mama, don’t you let them take my legs,” the lieutenant moaned. “Tell them they can’t take my legs.”

  “Your legs are just fine, Lieutenant. Your legs are fine. I checked them out.”

  “I can’t find my legs. Who’re you? Where’s my mama?”

  “She had to go out for a minute. She’ll be back. Don’t move, sir.”

  Garcia felt along the body. It wasn’t the lieutenant’s legs that were missing. It was his arms. The machine-gun rounds had caught him perfectly at the shoulders, tearing away both of his arms.

  Hands covered in blood, Garcia didn’t know what to do. There was so much blood, he was slipping in it. The brush, the dirt, everything streamed with blood.

  “Tell my mama… I need to tell her something… please…”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll tell her.”

  There was no way tourniquets were going to help. There was nothing to tie them around. For a moment, Garcia listened to the firefight above him on the trail. That was where he belonged, he knew. But he couldn’t leave this man he didn’t like. Who was bleeding to death. Who should’ve bled to death already. The wounds were catastrophic, with half of each shoulder torn away.

  His fellow Marine.

  “I can’t find my legs nowhere, Mama…”

  ” “Hush up, sir. Please. Just be quiet. It’s all right.”

  Revolted by what he found himself doing, Garcia eased down beside the lieutenant’s torso and lifted the man’s head into his lap. Blood spurted onto him like a hose filled with hot piss.

  “My mama, she… she…”

  “Yes, sir. She’s here now. She’s listening. She’s come to help you.”

  “Mama… I tried to do right. I tried to do right, Mama. I tried to do right…”

  “You did right. Everything’s all right now, sir. You’re going to be just fine.”

  “Mama, I’ll do anything you say… please…”

  “She just wants you to be quiet now. Just rest, now. Your legs are fine. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “I don’t feel right.” Suddenly, the lieutenant’s eyes widened. They looked perfectly clear in the light of the tracers and stars. “Sergeant?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s me. Sergeant Garcia.”

  “It was my fault.”

  “Sir, anybody—”

  “It was my fault. I take full responsibility. I — am I bleeding?”

  “You’re going to be fine, sir. Just take it easy.”

  “You’re lying,” he said. “You can be court-martialed for lying to a superior.” And he died.

  Garcia said the quickest prayer of his life, then clawed his way back up to the trail. Hoping his return trip wouldn’t collect any mines he’d missed on the way down.

  He felt as though he’d been swimming in lukewarm soup. His wet uniform collected dust. Making mud-puppy fudge all over him.

  “Corporal Gallotti?”

  “Here, Sergeant.”

  “Go up the line. Pass the word. As soon as Cropsey and Larsen open up from the flank, we’re going straight up that hill. Tell everybody to stay low but keep going. Tell them to keep their fires concentrated on the machine-gun position. Anything to the left is blue. Got that?”

  “Yes, sergeant.”

  “Go.”

  Gallotti scuttled off. Garcia tried to dry his hands and his weapon so the slime wouldn’t screw him up. But the lieutenant’s blood had already gone sticky.

  How long had the business been going on? Ten minutes? Garcia couldn’t judge. More like fifteen, he decided. He just hoped Cropsey had taken his time and worked well to the Jihadis’ rear. Larsen would do what Crospey said, Garcia knew.

  A grenade exploded up the hillside, followed by another.

  “Let’s go!” Garcia screamed. “Stay low. Let’s go, Marines!”

  He scrambled up the steep slope, thighs burning, the muscles long tormented. A stream of tracers flirted above his head. But there was no more machine-gun fire.

  Voices began to shout on the high ground. In Mussie-talk. At least two of them. The firing above them stopped.

  Garcia heard Cropsey’s voice. “Stand the fuck up. Both of you.”

  More Mussie-babble.

  “Cease fire, cease fire,” Garcia shouted.

  “I said for you to stand the fuck up.” Cropsey’s voice again. “Raise your hands. Let me see them.”

  Garcia saw two shadows rise, silhouetted against the sky. Hands high. Two English-speaking hombres. Good news for the S-2.

  A weapon opened up. Two bursts. The Jihadis crumpled.

  “Cease fire! Goddamnit.”

  Breathing heavily, Garcia stumped the last twenty meters up the slope. Legs on fire.

  Cropsey stood over the J’s. He watched the shadows where they lay, as if for signs of life. Weapon poised to fire again. He didn’t seem to register Garcia’s approach.

  Garcia grabbed him by the upper arm. “What the fuck?”

  “I thought they had weapons.”

  “Their hands were in the goddamned air. I saw it.”

  “I thought they had weapons, Sergeant.”

  “Christ.”

  “Anyway, they killed Barrett.”

  “You just shot two men who were surrendering. The S-2—”

  “Whose side are you on, Sergeant?” Cropsey demanded. “ They don’t matter. What? We got two squads’ worth left out of a platoon? You going to send Corporal Gallotti back with prisoners? And the lieutenant doesn’t even know where we are?”

  “He’s dead. And you listen. Carefully, hombre.” Garcia leaned close. “You think you’re a bad motherfucker? My sister would’ve torn off your head and shit down your throat.” Garcia felt the other Marines approaching, and he lowered his voice. Without dropping his intensity. “You’re going to follow orders. Or you can go to the rear yourself. Under charges. You understand?”

  Something in his tone of voice worked. He could feel Cropsey curling inward. Like a slug you tossed salt on. Maybe surviving Montebello was worth something, after all.

  “Yeah, Sergeant,” Cropsey said. “I got it.”

  JERUSALEM

  Lieutenant General of the Military Order of the Brothers in Christ Simon Montfort stood on a ridge overlooking the flames as the suburbs of Jerusalem burned through the night. He could tell from the excited expressions exactly what his staff had come to report, but he let them wait a little longer. Illustrating his imperturbability, his destiny to command, his place in history. He understood the impression he made as the distant flames glinted off the three onyx crosses on his helmet. Tall, erect. The model of a Christian soldier.

  At last, Montfort turned. Smiling calmly at his chief of staff. “What is it, James?”

  “Sir, we’ve taken the Temple Mount.”

  Montfort nodded. His smile neither widened nor weakened. The sounds of battle from the middle distance were, indeed, far weaker than they had been even an hour earlier.

  Montfort fell to his knees, setting his right fist over his heart, in the attitude of a MOBIC soldier in prayer. Eyes turned Heavenward. Into the red-tinged darkness.

  “Lord God of hosts, we give thanks unto You for the glory of this day. Accept this, Your city, as our humble offering. Amen.”

  “Amen,” his staff echoed.

  Montfort rose. Taller than any of his immediate subordinates.

  All of whom had been carefully chosen. For a number of qualities beyond their zealous faith.r />
  “When the sun rises,” he said, “I want no stone, no brick — not one splinter — left standing where the enemies of Christ erected their temple. We will erase the Dome of the Rock from history. Praise the Lord.”

  “Praise the Lord!” his staff echoed. The Guardians, well-armed, repeated the phrase from the shadows.

  “Go now,” Montfort said. “Each man to his toil in the vineyards of the Lord.”

  And after each had gone but one, that man came to Montfort. His eyes asked if he might approach.

  “What is it, James?”

  “Sir… I need a decision about the locals. We’ve got at least twenty thousand of them on our hands. Maybe as many still hiding in the city. We can’t put it off any longer. We need to decide where to move them.”

  “We’re not going to move them,” Montfort said.

  “But… Jerusalem was to be purified…”

  “It will be. And it shall be. Kill them all.”

  His chief of staff recoiled. His mouth hung open, robbed of speech. At last, he stammered, “But… there are still some Christians… Orthodox, Syriac, Chaldeans…”

  “Kill them all,” Montfort said calmly. “God will know his own.”

  TEN

  PHASE LINE DEL REY, JEZREEL VALLEY

  “Would you be careful, sir?” the gunner said over the tank’s intercom. “You’re going to put somebody’s eye out with that thing.”

  Lieutenant Col o nel Montgomery Maxwell VI resettled his scabbard around his waist. The commander’s weapon station in an M-1A4 tank wasn’t the ideal place to wear a saber, but Monty Maxwell wasn’t about to break a family tradition. The M-1913 cavalry saber had been given to his great-grandfather by Georgie Patton himself… although the family glossed over the circumstances, which involved the suppression of the Bonus Marchers. Maxwells had worn the sword with Abrams in northern France and in Vietnam, under McCaffrey in Desert Storm, and under Wallace on the march to Baghdad. At West Point, Maxwell had been the captain of the fencing team, and later, he’d worn the saber himself during the Abuja campaign.

  The sword was an incon ve nience, but so was taking a crap during a battle. A man had to do what a man had to do.

  As the tank plunged across the fields, buttoned up and attacking east toward Afula, Maxwell wondered if the whole plan wasn’t madness. He veered between picturing blue-jacketed ancestors riding with Kill-Cavalry Kilpatrick or leading Buffalo Soldiers against Apaches and wondering what on earth he himself was doing charging up a wide-open valley into the morning sun. With orders to switch off his countermeasures and those on every tank and infantry fighting vehicle in Task Force 2-34. At exactly 0621. For exactly forty seconds.

  It occurred to Monty Maxwell that the traditional hatred of staff officers was fully justified.

  One click to go. Two brigade combat teams attacking abreast, and still no incoming. Were the J’s sleeping in? Or waiting to spring an all-arms ambush when it was too late to make a U-turn? As ordered, he had two armor-heavy companies up, sweeping forward in a skirmish line, with his C Company trailing in a hedgehog column. TF 1-16 to his left and TF 1-34 to his right, with another brigade on the right flank. All of them two up, one back. The Jihadis would be looking at well over a hundred combat vehicles rushing toward them in the front rank alone.

  It was the kind of shooting gallery antitank gunners dreamed of. But nobody was shooting. Yet.

  The tank took a hard jolt. Severe enough to make Maxwell worry, for an instant, that a track might have snapped. But the big Abrams, a veteran of more overhauls than the face of an aging actress, kept on grinding forward.

  As a battalion commander, Maxwell didn’t belong in the front line of vehicles. But when he’d heard the plan laid out at the brigade briefing, he’d decided that he wasn’t going to order his soldiers to do such a crazy-ass thing unless he was in the forward rank with them. The XO could follow behind and sort things out. If the Jihadis were shooting straight.

  Maxwell had no target in view yet — just a lot of long shadows and dazzling early sunlight. But he wanted to be ready to engage at the longest possible range.

  “Loader! Load Lima-Delta.”

  He imagined Specialist Prizzi going about his work, a sailor manhandling a heavy weight on a rolling deck in a storm. The stabilizers and the suspension did only so much.

  A long-distance kinetic-energy round had a greater effective range than any imaging system on the tank. It seemed the obvious weapon of choice.

  “Lima-Delta up.”

  “Prepare to cut countermeasures.”

  That would bring out a sweat on everybody. At least two brigades’ worth of soldiers were thinking the same thing: What’s this all about?”

  As they charged down the valley, into the sun, Maxwell wondered if the Jihadis could feel the ground shake yet. We’re coming, he told them. Heavy metal. Just for you.

  He scanned his battle computer — hoping it didn’t have a parasite in it — then double-checked the time against his watch. Counting down. Although the J’s could see them clear as candy in a dish from the high ground to the north, the attacking units had been ordered to move on radio silence. Until their countermeasures suites were reactivated.

  He’d scrutinized the distances on the maps. And he hoped the J’s didn’t have any extended-range surprises in their arsenal. Crazy-ass staff lunacy. Like going naked in a snake pit.

  “Approaching Phase Line Watts,” Maxwell said. He was sweating terribly. And he didn’t like it. Fear was not a Maxwell tradition.

  Oh, bull, he thought. Every one of them was afraid. Of something. At some point.

  The landscape rushed toward his viewer. Countdown. Six, five, four…

  Maxwell flipped three switches with one downward sweep of his hand.

  “Countermeasures off.”

  Sweet Jesus, dear Jesus, don’t destroy my battalion…

  Charging ahead. Jolting over neglected fields. Trying to get the speed exactly right.

  In the distance, from ten to three o’clock, Maxwell saw dozens of tiny pops of light.

  The ATGMs. Headed straight for them all.

  Twenty seconds to go. What was the flight time of one of those sonsofbitches?

  Sixteen seconds.

  Suddenly, all he wanted to do was to max out his speed, to attack, to get at the enemy who was being given this free shot.

  Eleven seconds. Another nasty jounce. The hull scraped something hard. After a second’s hesitation, the tank grunted forward.

  Eight seconds…

  More and more pops of light. As if the J’s had a division’s worth of antitank missiles in the Afula pocket. God only knew what was coming down from the hills at them…

  Five seconds…

  Maxwell shifted to his thermal viewer just in time to see a black dot with a flare of flame behind it. Heading straight for his tank.

  He almost shouted, “Halt!”

  He didn’t.

  Three seconds… two…

  Before he could flip the switches again, the missile plowed into the earth, less than a football field from his tank’s glacis plate. It didn’t explode, but threw a spray of earth to either side.

  All across his field of vision, missiles were dropping to earth. Digging expensive furrows in the dirt.

  As the countermeasures suites kicked back in across the division’s front, follow-on volleys of missiles went haywire.

  “Well, fuck me dead with a reindeer dick,” Maxwell said.

  “That an offer, sir?” the gunner said. Relief in his voice.

  Now Maxwell was back to being a commander. Wondering if any of his vehicles had been hit. They were off radio silence, but Maxwell figured the jamming would be so heavy that he’d be lucky to reach the tanks to either side of him.

  “Hey, sir… Watch the sword, okay?”

  It had slipped around again. Maxwell settled its position as best he could.

  “Stay quiet on the intercom,” he said, clicking his headset’s control to radi
o comms.

  “This is Stallion Six. Dreadnaughts, unit report. Over.”

  To Maxwell’s astonishment, Captain Brickell’s voice came back with perfect clarity.

  “This is Alpha. No losses. Continuing mission.”

  “Bravo, report.”

  “Bravo here. No combat losses. One Bradley tango-uniform. Broke a track. Continuing mission.”

  “Charlie, report.”

  “Two big boys down in an irrigation ditch. Wasn’t mapped. No combat losses. Continuing mission.”

  Hallelujah.

  “Gentlemen, draw your sabers.” Maxwell wished it wasn’t just a figure of speech. “And prepare to close with the enemy.”

  To the front, splashes of flame and clouds of smoke. Artillery fire dropping on the Jihadi antitank positions. Lots of beautiful artillery. It looked as if every tube in the corps was pumping out rounds.

  “A thing of beauty is a fucking joy forever,” Maxwell said, back on the intercom. “Anybody know who said that?”

  “You, sir?”

  “John Keats.”

  “Sir,” the gunner said, “Keats never said—”

  “Prepare to repel drones.”

  Maxwell had seen the dark forms darting out of the veil of artillery smoke. Well, at least they’d gotten through the first wave of ATGMs.

  He unlocked his hatch and pushed the heavy cover open, taking a beating about the rib cage as he stood to man the.50 cal. Against drones, it was useless to try to control it while buttoned up. He just hoped the stabilizer wasn’t broke-dick again.

  A shadow flitted over the tank, then another. Coming from behind. Maxwell looked up. Friendly drones. He watched as they soared toward the approaching enemy UAVs.

  Any attempt to employ the machine gun would be as likely to bring down a U.S. Army drone as an enemy airframe. Maxwell pushed the lock release and grabbed the handle to button up again. Gingerly. As a captain, he’d smashed his saber hand on maneuvers by shutting a hatch while rolling through broken terrain.

  “Gunner. Targets?”

  “Negative, sir,” Sergeant Nash told him. “It’s not just our smoke. The J’s have obscurants up. And they’re turning their spectrum jammers on and off.”

  Where was the Jihadi artillery? Were they limiting it to counter-fire? Arty wasn’t the best weapon against tanks, especially with the new jammers to divert homing rounds. But it seemed weird that they weren’t dumping steel on the attack formation anyway.