The War After Armageddon Read online

  Harris ordered himself to maintain his self-control, not to judge before he had the facts. But young Captain Cavanaugh would need a damned good explanation for this one.

  Wiping his face, the captain trotted toward him. Harris realized the man had been crying.

  “What going on, captain?”

  “Sir… You’ve got to see this.”

  “You told me that. Twice. What do I have to see?”

  “You’ve just got to see it.” The captain turned back toward the rust-colored boxcars with the white letters “DB” on their sides.

  “Sergeant Z,” the captain called. “Help me.”

  The sergeant shouldered his rifle, reluctantly, and moved toward the first boxcar.

  They opened the door. And the stench hit everyone like a fist. Even the Germans winced.

  The corpses rose almost to the middle of the car’s interior. Men. Women. Children. Stiff. Wide-eyed. Mouths agape. Even a day or two into death, they retained their Turkish pallor. Hands had literally clawed themselves to the bone in their last, desperate moments.

  As Harris watched, a woman’s corpse broke from the mass and began to slide, accelerating as it dropped to the ground. Dead bones broke.

  One cold raindrop struck Harris on the lips.

  “They thought it was funny,” the captain said. His voice had broken to a child’s tone. “Somebody closed all the air vents. They suffocated. And the Krauts thought it was funny.”

  Harris allowed himself a long look. He needed time to master himself.

  When he felt ready, he strode over to the Germans. Half of them looked worried. The rest smirked.

  “Who did this?” Harris asked an Oberleutnant, the highest ranking figure he could see among them.

  “I don’t speak pig English,” the officer said. With quite a good accent. He made a spitting sound. “Ihr sind doch alle Rassenverraeter.”

  A Feldwebel spoke up. “We have nothing to do with this. They are dead a long time. Days. We only make the Sicherheitsdienst here. Nothing with the trains. Da ist die Bahnpolizei verantwortlich.”

  “They knew,” Cavanaugh said. “They knew. They were laughing about it.”

  The German officer decided to speak English, after all. He snickered and said, “Maybe Osama bin Laden is in there. Was meinst du, Herr Brigadegeneral? Nach dreissig Jahren! Maybe you should look. If you Americans love these Dreck-Muslimen so much. But you have no right to take away our weapons. It is against the agreement. I will make a protest.”

  Harris looked at him. For a moment, he considered shutting the Germans inside the boxcar with the corpses and locking it shut. He would’ve loved to do it. And he wasn’t worried about protests. He would’ve faced a court-martial without blinking. But he realized that anything further done to the German guards would simply be taken out on other Muslims before the next train entered the compound.

  “Give them back their weapons,” he told the captain. “Unless you have evidence of their direct involvement.”

  “But, sir, we—”

  “Just execute the order, Captain.” He turned to the German first lieutenant. “You have the formal apology of the United States Government for this misunderstanding. Now get out of here before I have you shot.”

  The lieutenant kept up his smirk as he met Harris’s eyes.

  “Three,” Harris said, turning back to business, “I want them put in body bags and taken out for burial at sea. They will not be buried on German soil.”

  “I’ll have to get the doc to sign off. They might be infectious and—”

  “They will not be buried on German soil. Work it out, Three. Cavanaugh?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Walk with me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Harris led him back toward the docks. Just far enough for privacy. And shy of the open-air latrine. “Look. I understand. I understand what you’re feeling. But an officer focuses on his mission. And our mission is to evacuate the living.” Harris gestured toward the sea of discarded humanity as the sky began to spit rain. “Focus on them. There’s nothing we can do for the dead. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He didn’t get it, of course. Not completely. But he’d be all right. Harris had been through his own moments years before, as a company commander in Diyala. Plenty to make a man sick, to make him angry. But a good soldier just kept marching and did his duty.

  It seemed to him the world was going mad. His intel officer had just briefed a report that concluded that the top Islamist extremists in Europe had never expected their uprising to succeed. The whole purpose had been provocation, to deepen the split between Islam and the West, to make coexistence intolerable. They wanted all this to come to pass. Even Iraq and all that had come after had not prepared him for the irradiation of cities, the rabid slaughter of the innocent, and Europe’s reverting to the continent’s age-old habits — such as the German tendency to stuff unwanted minorities into boxcars. Of course, the French were behaving worse, according to the daily updates. And of all people, the Italians had gone maddest. Maybe it was the destruction of the Sistine Chapel, but the dolce vita Italians had turned out to be militant Catholics, after all. They put down their espressos and killed with gusto.

  When Harris had been a young officer, pundits had warned of “Eurabia,” of a Muslim demographic takeover of Europe. Looking out over the terrified thousands for whom he was responsible, those warnings seemed a wicked, sickening joke. Strangers were never welcome, in the end. All men wanted was an excuse to kill.

  Even before the attacks on his own country began, Harris sensed that this wasn’t an end, but a beginning.

  Without waiting for his staff to catch up with him, Harris plunged back into the mass of refugees. That night, typhus broke out.

  * * *

  So much had happened in the five years since he looked into that boxcar that the world in which he now led troops to war seemed unrecognizable. Dreamers had changed the world, but their dreams were grim. The great American effort to evacuate Europe’s Muslims had turned into a debacle. None of the states from which their ancestors had come would accept the refugees. Islamist firebrands declared that all that had transpired in Europe had been an American plot to oppress Muslims. Overcrowded ships lay at anchor in the Mediterranean or in the smack-down heat of the Persian Gulf. Arab governments took their cue to blame Washington for the suffering, unwilling to welcome Muslims who had lived in Europe amid liberal ideas. American counterarguments were mocked. The global media accused the United States of making pawns of the refugees. When a riot aboard a converted cruise ship turned deadly, the European pogroms were forgotten as if they had been an embarrassing soccer match. All agreed that Washington was the true enemy of Islam.

  When the refugees were landed by force in Alexandria and Beirut, in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf sheikhdoms, the local governments let them perish on the docks until, with tens of thousands dead and headlines blazing, they belatedly opened their arms to their fellow Muslims “to save them from America.”

  But the Islamists had gone too far at last. Obsessed with their dream of reestablishing the caliphate, they provoked the rise of a wildfire reaction among Christians. The Reverend Dr. Jeff B. Gui, an evangelist from Arkansas, mesmerized millions with sermons bewailing “the captivity of the ancient Christian heartlands.” While Muslims raged and demanded the restoration of their medieval empire of the sword, ever more Christians remembered that almost all of the cities that had cradled Christianity were now in Muslim hands: Alexandria, the great school of the faith, as well as Antioch, Damascus, Ephesus, Tyre, Tarsus, Philadelphia, Smyrna, Nicea, Constantinople… these daughters of the church cried out to be redeemed from the ravishes of the Anti christ. According to the Reverend Dr. Gui, it was time for a crusade.

  The movement spread with a rapidity that left secular critics agape, from Nashville to Nairobi, from Little Rock to Warsaw. When The New Yorker ran an article mocking the Reverend Dr. Gui’s message and his credentials, the ma
naging editor was shot down in the street, and the gunman was acclaimed as a Christian soldier by millions of Americans. Muslim extremists had conjured demons they could not put down.

  At that fateful moment, Iran launched a barrage of nuclear missiles at Israel, killing two million people. On the same day, nuclear devices exploded in downtown Los Angeles and on the Vegas Strip. Islamists proudly claimed responsibility.

  That was the beginning of the Holy War. With elections looming, American politicians from both parties rediscovered their religious roots. Even Princeton recollected its Presbyterian heritage. Clinging adamantly to his peace policy, the president refused to respond to the attacks. He lost his reelection bid by the greatest landslide in American history. The Reverend Dr. Gui took his oath of office as vice president.

  At the new administration’s behest, Congress authorized funding for a religion-based reorganization of the National Guard as the Military Order of the Brothers in Christ. Regiments of young men and women lined up outside the church halls used as MOBIC recruiting centers. When a call went out for officers and NCOs from the active-duty military to staff the new corps and divisions, devout Christians and opportunists volunteered by thousands. Six months later, the Army and Marine Corps were ordered to sign over their latest weapons systems to the now-activated MOBIC units and to rearm themselves from reserve stocks.

  “We must give the best weapons to those who yearn to take the fight to the Anti christ,” Vice President Gui announced.

  With bewildering speed, the Military Order of the Brothers in Christ and their supporters had gotten their crusade against Islam, an invasion to retake the Biblical heartlands from the infidel. And as the favored MOBIC forces battled toward Jerusalem, Lieutenant General Flintlock Harris had the mission of taking Damascus with what remained of the Army and Marines.

  TWO

  MT. CARMEL RIDGES, EMIRATE OF AL-QUDS AND DAMASKUS

  Tracers streaked down the alley, but the shooting inside the house stopped. Sergeant Ricky Garcia heard the snap of a magazine going home.

  “Ground floor clear.” Freytag’s voice. Hoarse.

  “Coming in,” Garcia shouted.

  “Going up.”

  Garcia had lost his night-eyes several streets back, and the interior of the house was a filthy mist. Cordite and smoke cut his sinuses.

  Footsteps pounded up the stairs. Freytag and Corporal Kovack. Just stay out of their way. Raise the lieutenant. Find out who’s on first.

  Garcia thumbed the crud off his mike and pushed the black bead to his mouth. Huddling near the doorway. Covering the street. Guns up. All the time.

  “Clear one,” Freytag yelled. Boots thumped overhead. “Go, go, go.”

  “Cease fire!” Kovack yelled. As if deafened and unable to hear himself. “There’s women—”

  The blast upstairs blew Garcia back through the front door. His rifle let off a round as he landed, bucking, with the muzzle inches from his eyes. Stunned, he lay on the ground like a tossed sea bag. For second after second. Many seconds. No idea how many. Then the fear buzzed him, and he patted himself down.

  No wetness. Vital parts accounted for. Everything seemed to work. Tracers wasped overhead, the Jihadis shooting wildly. No fire discipline. The fucks deserved to die.

  When he tried to get up and crawl back through the doorway, he was unsteady, even on all fours. Like the end of the worst drunk of his life. More tracers chased each other down the alley. He remembered, suddenly, that there should be noise to go with those lights. All he could hear was head-under-water emptiness.

  Garcia flattened himself, weapon close, and counted to ten. Then he tried to make it through the door again. Arms and legs back in formation. Small miracle. The fog of dust inside was so thick he could only breathe in gasps.

  “Corporal Kovack? Freytag?”

  He shouted the words but couldn’t hear himself. An echo, though. Strange. More underwater follies.

  “Yo? Anybody?”

  He knew. No way any Marine was walking down those stairs alive. Then he realized there were no stairs anymore. Not above the first three or four. A new hole in the roof sucked in the starlight. Right through the swirls of plaster dust.

  Garcia kicked something soft. Didn’t want to, but he reached down. A torso. Weight-lifter muscles. Nothing else. Just a rib cage and guts in bloody uniform cloth. Fresh meat from the butcher’s counter.

  Somewhere in the mess, a kid began to wail. The buggers could live through anything. Hadn’t he? As a kid?

  “Get your own fucking daddy,” Garcia told his fellow survivor. And he slipped back outside, almost in control of his balance now. Another concussion. He didn’t need a corpsman to tell him. Christ. How many could you take? End up punchy like the old guys at the gym. San Sebastian.

  One more time, he scraped the minimike with his thumbnail. Like that was going to make it work. Right.

  Movement. Not Jihadis. Marines.

  He realized he could hear gunfire again.

  One of the Marines raised his rifle.

  “Belleau,” Garcia called. Hoping the other guy’s ears were in better shape than his own.

  “Wood.” Gotcha, Devil Dog.

  One Marine rushed across the street, keeping low, while the other covered him. Just like in training. Okay. The sprinter turned out to be Corporal Banks.

  “Sergeant Garcia? Where you been, man?”

  “Where’s the platoon commander?”

  “Dead.”

  “You know that?”

  “I saw him. Headshot.”

  “Shit.”

  In nomini Patri… The lieutenant had been all right. But they could all feel bad about him later. Just now, there was more immediate stuff going down.

  “That Barrett with you?”

  “Nervous in the service. First Squad’s one street over. Hunkered down. After Staff Sergeant Twilley got hit—”

  “Where’s the lieutenant?”

  “I told you, he’s—”

  “Where’s the fucking body?”

  “Back a couple streets.”

  “Can you find him?”

  “Yeah. Sure. Sergeant Garcia, you’re the last—”

  “Get his headset. And don’t forget to come back. I’ll be with First Squad.”

  “Where’s Freytag and—”

  “Just move out, Corporal.”

  The platoon had walked in on a suicide company. Rear guard for the Jihadis pulling off the high ground. Bad hombres. The first thing that hit Garcia’s squad was a volley of flash grenades, blinding them through their night-sights. The headache from Hell. The new platoon sergeant went down trying to get things unscrewed, along with Sergeant diMeola. Now the lieutenant was dead. Fucking lot of good college did him. And Sergeant Twilley before him. One ambush after another. They’d caught it good. Tired as shit. And higher pushing them to keep moving.

  Now what was left of the platoon was his. Until company sent down somebody with a higher rating.

  He wasn’t ready for this.

  Garcia followed Corporal Banks back across the alley. Machine-gun fire chased them. The Jihadi on the trigger didn’t know how to lead a target.

  “Barrett.” He slapped the lance corporal’s shoulder as he passed him. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  “Where we—”

  “Move. Follow me.”

  He didn’t want this. Not now, not yet. Goddamned Jihadis. Maybe the MOBIC pukes were right. Only good Muslim…”

  “Belleau.”

  “Wood.”

  “Coming in.”

  “Hold for covering fire!” Corporal Gallotti. Head screwed on right. In a moment, several guns were up and nailing the darkness to the night.

  “Go!” Garcia told Barrett. He followed. Splashing through muck that smelled like every sewer pipe in the country had broken at once.

  The squad was too bunched up. Waiting for somebody to give an order. Gallotti was the natural leader but didn’t have the rank. Everything going to hell.

  �
��Listen up,” Garcia said. Loud enough to be heard. But not too loud. Anyway, the Jihadis were making a noise like Cinco de Mayo in the Plaza de Armas. “We’re going to get our asses unfucked. Right now. Corporal Gallotti’s in charge of this squad. Because I said so. Corporal, get the roofs covered. Both sides.”

  “Pullman’s topside, Sergeant.” He pointed across the street. “With Jamal.”

  “I said both sides. This is it. We’re not moving back one goddamned inch from here. We’re fucking Marines. We’re going fucking forward, if we go anyplace.”

  “Yo, Sergeant Garcia? Anybody ever tell you that you got a limited vocabulary.”

  Laughter. That was okay. If they could laugh, they could fight.

  “Buy me a dictionary. Now, check your ammo.“

  Banks scrambled up along the wall.

  “Corporal Gallotti,” Garcia continued, “get your squad set up with proper fields of fire. No more monkey-fucking. Banks, give me that.”

  Banks handed over the platoon commander’s headset and drop transmitter. Garcia wrapped it around his skull, feeling the plastic scrape the bristles at the nape of his neck.

  Before he could transmit, figures ran up behind them. The right helmet silhouettes and body-armor shoulders. Marines.

  It was Captain Cunningham.

  “Third Platoon?”

  “Yes, sir,” Garcia said.

  “Who’s in charge?”

  “I am, sir. Lieutenant Delaney’s—”

  “Well, take charge. You’ve got a squad and a couple of strays a block back playing with their dicks. We’ve got to clean this shithole out now. So the Army can go for a Sunday drive.” The captain paused for a moment. Looking at Garcia in the flickering light. “You’re the last E-5 in this platoon?” As if he doubted what he’d been told. Or doubted the man in front of him.

  “I’m it, sir.”

  The captain nodded, but hesitated. As if something in his head wouldn’t come clear. “Well, you know the mission,” he said at last.

  “That a question, sir?”

  After another flash-to-bang delay, Garcia realized that the captain wasn’t really thinking about him at all. He was thinking about his losses. One of his platoons shot to shit. Maybe thinking about the mission, maybe about his own future. It was a revelation Garcia would have preferred to postpone, but he saw to his bewilderment that officers had no special magic, after all. The captain was as shaky as he was. And struggling just as hard to hide it.